Some days later, a hot, dry day without a breath of wind, I was heading towards the public baths on the rue de la Madeleine couchée when I encountered the Petrarch brothers, who were cooling themselves at the quarter’s fountain. Francesco’s hair was streaming with water, and his skin was darkened to olive by the dunking. Gherardo sat on the lip of the stone basin, shaking the moisture from his hair. They had tossed aside their long gowns, the badge of the law student, and now wore only loose shirts and hose that clung to calves still muscular from their ride from Bologna. I wondered whether to pass without speaking, as a well-bred woman would do, or ask Francesco if he had any copying for me.
Francesco made the decision for me, calling out, “Solange Le Blanc! It is too hot to walk about the city.”
Gherardo sprawled on his back on the stone basin, legs astride, ignoring me. Francesco sprang up to counter his brother’s baseness, and pulled me into the shade of the basin, where we could talk without being observed.
“Sit here with me. I haven’t sent for you because I have yet to find a patron and, until then, I cannot pay you.” His eye lingered where the thin wool of my surcoat gaped just below my shoulder. “Your sleeve is untied.”
I held still—my throat hollow, my eyes soft, my breath free—as he slid a finger into the gap to fish out the loose end to tie it. Where was that scent, like a patch of wild mint—was it on his hair, his shirt, his mouth? His lips neared, perhaps to kiss, perhaps to speak some intimacy out of his brother’s hearing.
Gherardo’s eyes shot open and he sat up. “I am sweating again.”
“Why not go to the public baths,” I suggested. “I was going there myself.”
Gherardo put on his long gown, cuffed the dust from his hat, and lurched in the direction I pointed. Why shouldn’t I go with them, when I had already broken decorum by walking out without a servant and sitting close to a man? Francesco retrieved his gown and we went along
the street and up the stairs to the baths. In the antechamber, a giant eunuch stood with arms crossed to bar our way.
“Wife or harlot?” he asked Francesco, although I was wearing my scribe’s gown. “Wives through the main door, harlots through the curtain. If she’s neither, you cannot bring her in.”
Why didn’t the gatekeeper speak to me directly? “You have seen me here before. I am a citizen of Avignon, a public scribe.”
“A public what?” Then, out of the side of his mouth, he told Francesco, “There are better wantons to be had inside.”
Francesco kept his face turned from me as he fumbled to get his coins back into his shirt. Clearly, he was not going to challenge the eunuch for insulting me, and I was too humiliated to stand up for myself. I ran down the steps and back into the street. I did not slow down until Francesco caught up and took my elbow to guide me along the rue de la Bouquerie, where the stalls were opening after the midday rest. We said nothing, as if we had agreed to forget the painful incident.
At last he spoke. “What I would give for a freshening wind! The heat sucks the worst odours of the buildings onto the street.”
It was a relief to criticize the city. “Now you know why Avignon is called a sewer,” I said. “But be careful when you wish for wind. Soon enough, the mistral will drive the dust into the creases of your face as fiercely as into the cracks in the masonry.”
The alley was knotted with people. Ahead of us, some spiritual friars and nuns, mostly barefoot Franciscans, trudged with their heads down and their hands tucked into threadbare habits. Outside the Pignotte, the spirituals joined the line of lame and poor, beggars of all kinds, even peasants in village costume, who were queuing for the Pope’s free bread. The city marshal’s men prodded the line to flush out troublemakers with strong opinions. A white friar dressed like Christ must have said something heretical, for a sergeant knocked him face first into the dirt.
“News of this attack on the spirituals reached us in Bologna, but I did not believe it,” Francesco said. “I must report this to my friends.”
“It is dangerous to write such letters.”
“Perhaps, but they must be written, and I need someone I can trust to copy them for me.”
He seemed to be suggesting that I do it. Did that mean he considered me a friend? “Don’t slow down,” I warned, as we approached the Matheron gate, which had a human leg nailed to it. “Keep moving. This is what happens to heretics. After they are tortured, they are beheaded, drawn, and quartered, then nailed to the gates to warn new arrivals to the city.”
Made grave by this display of cruelty, we walked until we met the Rhône, where we found a poplar offering shade. We sat down together, close but without touching.
“This is a vulgar river,” I said. “I much prefer the Sorgue.”
“At Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, the Sorgue issues from the sheer rock in a pure cold stream. Someday I’d like to take you to see it. Eventually, I wish to live there to dedicate myself to study and reflection. First, I must endure this horrifying city, since Pope John and his cardinals are here. I must earn their attention or be invisible to men of culture.”
“You are in exile like Dante.”
He seemed grateful for this comparison. “Yes, I believe I am. I would like to read his
Vita Nuova
again, if you’ll lend it to me.”
I hesitated. “I can’t risk damage to the unbound quires, but I will make a copy for you.”
“That will take too long. Lend it to me as it is.”
“I am hoping to receive a commission to copy it.”
“And I cannot pay you …”
Was it a statement, or the sharp edge of an argument? I waited to hear what he would say next. On his feet now, he twisted a branch until it sprang back viciously. I saw how it was: he had asked for something and I’d refused him. He noticed a wasp’s nest spun around one of the branches and broke into it with his fingers, daring the wasps to sting Francesco Petrarch.
“In this shapeless gown, I am a student, nothing more,” he said.
“First that oaf in the baths mistook me for a rogue the equal of himself, then you remind me that I have no coins to pay for copying when my profession demands a scribe.”
It was my turn to speak. “What about my humiliation when told I had to enter that narrow door for harlots? There was another door for wives, but you—scholar, courtier, man of such great talent—were not willing to let me pass as your wife, even for an hour. Instead, you let me stumble back into the street alone.”
In a surprising gesture, he dropped to a knee. He took my hand and rubbed his thumb across the ink stains on my palm. “You are as you should be—a scribe’s daughter in a scribe’s garment.”
Arguing had hurt my throat and I was glad to let the matter go. “My father was no learned man, Francesco. Such a man would never leave his daughter on her own in Avignon. I was trained in an abbey and came here to earn a living with my pen, just as you did. I wish to work on manuscripts in a good library, a merchant’s or a cardinal’s, French or Italian, I care not which.”
“Your ambition is unusual for a woman.” He was still kneeling beside me, coupling my fingers with his. “But grant me this—the man should lead the way. Once I have made my name as a man of letters, I will reach down to pull you up beside me.” Demonstrating, he lifted me to my feet. “First, serve me as a scribe so my writing can be properly presented to men of wealth. As soon as I have found patronage, I will double your investment.”
Our hands were still linked, and I longed to keep them that way. “How will you do so?”
“Through loyalty, Solange—great loyalty, such as no other man will ever pay you.”
Sixteen
O
N THE SUMMER SOLSTICE
, I was at the ostler’s at daybreak to choose two horses. Today, Francesco and I planned to ride to the fountain of the Sorgue that he found so occult and stirring. The horses stood saddled and ready, and I was irritated, by the time he arrived.
“We agreed to meet here at the first hour,” I said.
“But what is the first hour in Avignon—the hour after midnight, or prime? There is no logic to it. I waited until the town crier called it out.”
“The first hour is always at dawn.”
“Making the hours twice as long in summer than in winter.”
He boosted me into the mare’s saddle and she headed of her own will towards the nearest city gate. Sturdy but unloved, she trod as if her hooves pinched, and Francesco had to slow his gelding to her pace.
Today we spoke Italian, for it was rich in echoes and big, soft rhymes. We discussed the poems he was struggling to write and the verse letters he was having more success with. I was making the fair copies of his work in my best script with decorated capitals. These he
presented to important men—cardinals, bishops, anyone who would give him an audience—in the hope of receiving honorariums. At other times, I worked in my chamber in the Cheval Blanc for tradesmen who needed documents copied, and from this plain work I earned my living, since as yet I had taken no coins from Francesco.
After two leagues, the terrain became so familiar that I hoped for a glimpse of Clairefontaine. At this time of year, the nuns would be out thinning the shoots in the vineyard. I would not be welcome after maiming the Florentine, but I hoped to observe the nuns from afar and recognize each by the way she stooped with her shears or wiped her brow in the heat.
“Shall we ride upstream along the Sorgue?” I asked. “We may be able to see the abbey where I was raised.”
He dismounted to unroll a map against the mare’s neck, so I could see it. “Show me where it is.”
“About half-way between Avignon and Fontaine-de-Vaucluse. Somewhere near Gadagne, for we could hear its bells just before ours.”
His thumb landed on a village. “We are nearly at Gadagne now. Was your abbey to the east or west?”
On the map, one bell-tower looked much like another. I ran my finger across the sheet, unable to identify the Sorgue’s twists and turns.
He laughed at my difficulty. “Your Sorgue is not one river, but many. After it leaves the source at Fontaine, it splits into separate channels that flood the delta.” When I said no more, for fear of revealing further defects in my education, he shoved the map back into his saddlebag. “We’ll ride to Le Thor to meet the Grande Sorgue, then continue to Isle-sur-la-Sorgue to cross the bridge there.”
We arrived at Fontaine-de-Vaucluse as the sun was reaching its peak. Francesco pointed to the house that he hoped to own beneath the towering cliff where the Sorgue began its journey. We walked our mounts up the incline towards the source, watered them, put them in the wild hay, and scrambled over the rocks to see the river surging from a black,
bottomless cavern in the earth. We climbed back down, coated by spray and grime, and Francesco cut our spiced sausage into neat rounds. We ate the peppery meat while a heron fished in the river beside us.
The long ride had made us carefree and I hoped that it had made us something more, for my affection for Francesco was deepening. He propped himself against an umbrella pine, closing his eyes. Exploring the river, I discovered an inviting pool, formed by some giant boulders heated by the sun. I removed my outer clothes, loosened the veil around my hair, rinsed it in the pool, and spread it on a steaming rock to dry.
There was no gatekeeper to insult us here, only the heron, which flew off with an elegant swoop of its great wings. I stepped into the pool and sat down facing Francesco, with my breasts at the water line, visible through my wet shift.
I was pleased to find that he had been observing. He hopped on one leg then the other to peel off his hose, uncovering his nakedness, a contradiction of hard lines and rounded contours. He bunched up his clothing to cover his groin, then tossed the garments aside, laughing at himself. I reclined against the warm rocks as he hobbled over the sharp ground on tender feet. Perhaps I had something of my mother in me, priming me for secular love, or perhaps the city had taught me to fear loneliness more than lust, for the man who walked towards me appeared more god-like than human. After all, wasn’t Eros a god—the same god Dante knew as Amore?
He dipped an ankle, made a face. “It’s cool.”
“Only because you’ve been sitting in the sun.”
I stretched out a bare foot to nudge him in. He eased his legs into the pool, while I plucked leaves from an aromatic shrub nearby and dropped them into the water. Soon we were splashing each other like children. Far above us, a peregrine’s cry echoed against the cliff as a fowler lowered himself on a swinging rope, wedging his feet into the crevices to hunt for the nest of young falcons. Everything was easy between Francesco and me, with none of the awkwardness there often was in Avignon. Although I knew little about men, I could see that the
heat of the pool had a happy effect on him. He clamped his hand on my wrist, pulled me towards him to show how my game had roused him, and spoke some rough Tuscan that made his intention clear.
In spite of my yearning, it was suddenly too much, for I saw and heard, once more, the Florentine—naked, erect, and in a rage—speaking even rougher Tuscan. I was pitched headlong into the terror and pushed Francesco away. When he observed my fear, his ardour cooled. He climbed from the water with his back to me and hopped from foot to foot over the sharp rocks to collect his clothing and yank up his hose. I lay on a flat rock in the sun and fell into a troubled sleep. I woke sometime later with aching temples, to see Francesco’s pen working its way across a page. My shift was almost dry. I pulled on my robe and sat beside him until his pen halted.
“I had an unsettling dream that I cannot drive from my mind,” I said, “in which you received a letter commanding you to go to Italy. We travelled on horseback with two servants over a mountain pass known for its brigands. At night, we stopped in villages for safety, getting little sleep because of saddle pain. At last we entered Rome, where we were greeted by Italian nobles, who feasted you, robed you in sumptuous garments, and placed a crown of scented leaves upon your head.”
“Laurel,” he said, “like the shrub growing here. In ancient times, poets were crowned on the Capitoline hill with laurel wreaths. This is dark knowledge that you bear inside you, Solange. I hope it is a predictive dream, since I would like nothing better than to be honoured for my poetry.”