Muse (28 page)

I stood on one of the planks across the canal, lifted my hands to command their attention, and shouted, “None of you will perish if you do as I tell you. Say ten paternosters, one after another, and before you say the tenth, the moon will return.”

I started chanting a paternoster loudly. The woman next to me joined in, and so did the next, and the next, and so did all the men, until all the jumpers were chanting, the children most eagerly of all. Gradually, the sky became a field of chevrons, pulsing red on black, then black on red, like the patterns that sometimes appeared on the inside of my eyelids. On the ninth paternoster, the fat red moon appeared on top of the teeth-like crenels of the city wall.

A man yelled, “The moon is back! The devil swallowed it, then spat it out!”

The jumpers left off chanting to crow at their good fortune and the musicians picked up their instruments to pluck them with gusto. The folk celebrated their escape from hell by throwing more fuel on their fire. A goose was hauled up a greased pole in a basket and the brawniest of the climbers, who finally made it to the top, earned it as a prize. A reveller chased down a striped cat, normally thought to bring good fortune. The youths nailed it to a post and took turns butting it with their heads.

What issued from the pipes, psaltry, and tabors could not be called music. It came like a disease from the gut of the poor, a dark, wounded joy. The thigh-slapping rhythm made my feet twitch with old memory and I danced until every bone felt alive and only thinly clothed in flesh.
I sensed the tug deep inside my womb, for though I was born under the sun at Pentecost, I bled each month when the moon was full.

The mountebank who had gone off with Gherardo limped out of the passage towards the fire, his lips tinged with phosphor. Long in the tooth, but short of brain, he seemed known to the mob, for they encouraged a stinking he-goat to ram him cruelly. The man was bleating gibberish—wild accusations of aiguillette, castration by Satan. Two men demanded that he prove it, goading him with pointed sticks. He ripped off his cloak and his tunic then, egged on by the mob, his shirt, his hose, until he stood naked with a saintly pallor, exposing the split and empty purses dangling between his legs. The cry went up that the eunuch was the devil’s catamite and the folk spun him around until he crashed against the boiling cauldron, splitting his head open and falling lifelessly into the flames. Howling at the loss of their pig-meat, the mob threw wood upon the blaze to speed it, then tossed the battered cat on top of the dead eunuch, as another of the devil’s party.

The smoke blew at me, cloaking me with ashes. It stank of the burning offal and horns on the street of the butchers. My nose remembered the burning flesh of the friar at the auto-da-fé. Saint or catamite, they smelt the same. I sank back into the mob, belly-sick, despising myself for speaking the same rough tongue. The goat hobbled off, pursued by revellers with sharpened sticks, and Gherardo reappeared with a sober mien, as if he had expelled a mess of bile.

“What was in that wineskin you shared with the eunuch?” I asked.

“Greco laced with wormwood oil. I meant to drink the skin myself, but he grabbed it from me and downed most of it.”

“Then he took your death upon himself, for he was pushed into the fire. Why do you associate with such knaves, Gherardo? You have exiled yourself from Avignon with such behaviour.”

“And you, Solange—why do those men lurk about you? Those red-haired barbarians on the far side of the fire are carrying pikes. Why are they in this quarter tonight, if not for you?”

“They are only weapon-smiths.” I drew my cowl over my forehead. “I’m sure they do not recognize me.”

“Look at your feet. You are wearing palace shoes! I heard those smiths saying that you cast a spell over the moon to make it taste so bad the devil spat it out. The more they glorify you, the more they give you dangerous powers.”

“You are in danger here as well. There is nothing left for you in Avignon.”

He hugged me with surprising force. He was still a strong man in spite of the toll rough living had taken. “You’ve been a true sister. Francesco is a fool for casting you aside. When he and I climbed Mont Ventoux, I chafed at his authority and headed up the steeper path. Checco said I was always looking for the short way to the top, like our mother, whereas he was destined to follow our father’s long, prudential route. I suppose he meant it as a rebuke, but he was right.”

“Where will you go?”

“To a quiet place to find a man with willing arms.”

There was a glint in his eye—a tear or a wink? I watched him set out towards the south, a knight armed only with chicanery. Wherever he was headed, I knew it would not be on the via prudentiæ. When I lost sight of him, I turned north to follow the dark alleyways back towards the fortress on the rock.

Thirty-five

C
LEMENT ENTERED HIS
bedchamber in the early morning after the eclipse, bone-chilled from his deliberations on the palace roof. I held out a drinking cup with wine I had spiced myself, having arrived only shortly before him. He dismissed his weary officers except for Nicolas de Besse, who crawled onto his pallet with one eye open, like a pedigreed hound. I told Clement I had ventured to the carnival, taking the risk of being chastised at once rather than in the weeks ahead. He asked me to describe the revels for him. When I got to the part about the moon reappearing on top of the battered fortifications, he became thoughtful.

“This is a sign that I should strengthen the broken city wall.”

From the palace roof, Clement had seen the dancers snaking along the rue du Cheval Blanc outside the city wall, a fortification so breached that only a fosse marked its jurisdiction at one point. By the light of the carnival fires, he had seen the dwellings erected outside the gates to house the overflow of people, and the bourgs that had been shambled together to ward off mercenaries and brigands. To protect his people,
he told me, he wanted to erect a new wall to triple the city’s size, spreading his wing over thirty thousand souls. The new ramparts would extend beyond the Mardi gras fires, bringing the outlaw lands into the city, the mob under control of their primate.

In the wake of the eclipse, raging currents swelled the Rhône until the arches of Saint Bénezet’s bridge cracked under the river’s displeasure. The city was under siege from the Rhône to the west and north, from the Durance to the south, and from the Sorgue canal, which was spilling over its banks in the southeast. The unpaved streets were spongy, the water ankle deep and rising. Only Doms rock, where the cathedral and palace stood, was dry. Had the contrary moon whipped up the flood, or was it the devil’s hand at work? Panic grew, until the guild-masters, the heads of the confraternities, met behind closed doors. They came forth in their regalia to proclaim the eclipse a bad omen for the papacy. The flood, they announced, was only the precursor of greater evil.

On the second Sunday of Lent, Clement gave a sermon in Notre-Dame-des-Doms to subdue the people’s fears by declaring that the eclipse was a favourable sign for the papacy. The very moment Clement VI emerged from the cathedral porch, a nimble mason dangling from the spire yelled down, “Most of your city is under water! We will all starve.”

Unruly apprentices of every stripe and colour brayed at the Pope, stomped their wet boots, and cursed the dry and richly clothed nobles progressing from the cathedral towards the palace for the debate on the eclipse’s meaning. Between the brewers and the hatters stood the raucous weapon-smiths, swatting their leather aprons and clanging their pikes. Recognizing the master by his turnip ears, I deviated from the palace women to speak to him. The smiths greeted me as Saint Barbara, their intercessor—the prophet whose sugared words poured nightly into their pope’s ears—and crossed themselves with flying thumbs. Several knelt to beseech me with makeshift prayers, attracting Clement’s eye. When he made an about-face, the convoy had to halt, for it could not go ahead of the Pope.

Clement drew near, his fur-lined cope skimming the rocky ground beside me. “Vicomtesse de Turenne, what do these red-haired men want from you?”

What should I tell him? Whether I deserved the smiths’ affection or not, this was a chance to shine before Clement’s officers and family. My status as a prophet had spun up at his coronation, then tumbled. If it fell too far, I stood to lose my footing in the court. Even now, clinging to Clement’s sisters was a new niece with tight brown curls, who was as unrelated to them as I was.

I pitched my voice for others to hear. “Your Holiness, the weapon-smiths think I drove off the eclipse and saved the city. In their simple faith, these men believe I am Saint Barbara, their patron saint, come back to life.”

“You spoke to them. What did you say?”

“That I owe my powers to the highest authority, the Pope.”

Pleased, he gestured that I should progress with him along the rocky path towards the palace. The audience chamber was filling with nobles, merchant-princes, bishops, and cardinals in chapeaux rouges. Telling the prelates from their notaries was hard, since their cloaks were as short and their sleeves as long and fluted. The Pope’s Barbary lion reclined on the dais, restrained by a slender, golden chain. At Clement’s command, I took the chair to his left and surveyed the audience of standing men. At the front were Cardinal Colonna and Cardinal Ceccano, swords slung militantly over their great robes. Between them stood Francesco in his laurel wreath and velvet gown, sizing me up impertinently. Behind him was a conclave of Italians, well girded with silver zonas, who had brazenly shunned the Pope’s sermon. This brigade of overdressed thieves outshone the audience chamber, which was severe. Its massive beams and stonework reflected the previous pope’s character, not Clement’s love of ceremony, since he knew what was due to him as monarch of the church.

Clement banged his ferula for the debate about the eclipse to begin.
He had stated his own views in his sermon to avoid the risk of debating in an open contest that gave no advantage to the Pope. The papal squires distributed copies of his sermon, and the Pope’s allies would speak in his stead. Hugues Roger sat at Clement’s right, but notoriously lacked diplomacy in speaking. Therefore the camerlengo began, declaring that during the eclipse the planets had aligned favourably to the French Pope—the words Clement most wished to hear. The camerlengo unrolled a sheepskin with a city plan that showed the new city wall the Pope would build to protect his people. As the man who ran the papal finances, his opinion should have carried weight, but his speech was long and tedious.

The debate now passed to the other side. Francesco di Petrarca de Florentia stepped forwards for the Italian lobby. I had been waiting for him to make his move with an uneasy mix of dread and anticipation, because I had not seen him since Clement’s coronation. He snapped open a broadside with one hand and held it out in front of him. As he read his speech, I admired his strong profile. Riding his stallion from Fontaine-de-Vaucluse at Colonna’s beckoning had honed his body to masculine perfection. His gestures were broad, his voice more deep and charismatic than in his youth.

“This disastrous eclipse is a sign that the Pope should vacate Avignon. The city does not belong to the King of France, much less to Pope Clement VI, although he now possesses her. Her true lord is Robert the Wise, King of Naples and Sicily and Count of Provence.” The crowd acknowledged the jab, since the opulent gown the poet laureate wore was known to have been King Robert’s. “This ruinous flooding”—Francesco’s voice tapped higher with each word—“is punishment for the Pope’s infidelity to Rome.”

Clement was twisting in his throne, consulting with his advisors on either side, for he had no desire to forfeit the vast revenues of his western territories. Scenting mutiny, he was steeling his clemency with anger. None of his foes understood Clement’s love of Avignon. He wished to guard his people. How could he do that from afar? He had
never spoken of going to Rome, even in private moments. I had been privy to his most fervent hopes and this was not amongst them.

As Francesco spoke, Cardinal Colonna refused a copy of the Pope’s sermon that a squire offered him. With the cardinal was a wolfhound dressed in a Colonna jacket. A dog of good breeding, it lounged insolently beside its master, attending to Francesco’s balanced sentences—until the Barbary lion stretched and yawned, magnificently. The wolfhound slipped its jewelled collar and charged, head down, towards the dais. Sneaking behind the lion, it planted its well-bred teeth in the beast’s hindquarters. The lion reared, yanking up the dozing stable-boy at the end of the chain. The wolfhound plunged through the arch, heading into the cloister with the squires in pursuit. The Limousin knights gripped their sword hilts, a broth of soldiers coming to a simmer.

Clement pounded his ferula and bellowed, “When your dog is caught, Colonna, it will be castrated. And you—if I smell a whiff of treason—you will be excommunicated!”

Of course the Pope could do no such thing, since the rules of debate precluded it, and his advisors counselled him to sit back down. Francesco had been rotating his broadside, and looked up to see what he had missed. One of Colonna’s hands trailed an empty leash; the other was on his sword. Cardinal Ceccano was also ready to draw his weapon, a threat in black beside Colonna’s red. Francesco leaned towards them, doubtless reminding them of the rules of debate, but Colonna snapped an order at him. Francesco shoved his speech into his gown and held up his palms to silence the uproar. My ears itched, for I knew that this would be worth listening to.

Francesco now spoke ex tempore. “Your Holiness, Cardinal Colonna is one of the supporting columns of the papal edifice.” He gave the audience time to catch the pun on
Colonna
. “The cardinal is as necessary to this court as Jupiter is to the solar system.”

Clement swung his gloved hand with the Fisherman’s ring towards his court astrologer, who took up the Pope’s case unsteadily. “I challenge
this assertion. When the moon was darkened by a hostile force, Jupiter was afraid to show its face, because it feared the moon’s superior power.”