The Cellars of Notre Dame

by Barbara Frale

  As he carried out his duty as a thaumaturgical king, he did genuinely appear to have something messianic about him. Perhaps because of his uncommon physical beauty, which he guarded like a priceless treasure, taking the greatest care of every detail of his body. Or perhaps because of the majestic elegance of his gestures, devoid of sudden movements and tamed to the slow pace of a liturgical ceremony. Even his aloof distance from the others, from whom he kept himself isolated, a superhuman figure looming over the mass, only accentuated his mystery.

  Or more probably, all that devotion to his sacred role was due to the fact that the sick actually recovered. Three notaries were in charge of systematically recording the names of all those who came, even from distant foreign lands, to bow before the king of France and to beg him to free them from their maladies. Then they gave everyone a sum in alms, so that when they returned home they would send back news of their recovery. Which invariably came.

  Not far from him, and prominent among the dignitaries who had the privilege of attending the rite, Henri Mondeville displayed with great satisfaction his proud belly, swathed in red velvet, and his status as a luminary in court service. He felt someone touch his arm. A valet was staring at him with a somewhat bewildered air.

  “Forgive me, Mondeville. There is someone who wants to talk to you.”

  “Now? While his Majesty is laying on his hands?”

  “My apologies, sir, but it is Guillaume Nogaret, the adjutant of Chancellor. He says he has a commission from the king.”

  The royal surgeon knew the good reputation of that lawyer in court circles, and if his Majesty had given the man a mission, he mustn’t hesitate to assist him. Mondeville bowed in the direction of the sovereign then left the group of dignitaries to slip away discreetly towards the corner where the person who sought him was waiting.

  The more he thought about it, the more Nogaret felt a monstrous suspicion growing within him, and what he had learned from the queen had done nothing but confirm his awful conjectures. Now he needed to hear another authoritative voice. A person who was thoroughly competent in medical matters: his Majesty’s personal surgeon.

  “Good morning, Mondeville. Please forgive me for disturbing you, but it is a matter of some urgency.”

  “Think nothing of it, Nogaret. The valet told me that you are carrying out an assignment on behalf of our king.”

  “Precisely. And in order to execute the wishes of His Majesty there is something that I must ask you. I have heard you had a bitter argument with Arnaldo da Villanova two years ago. It happened in the Louvre, in the royal apartments. I was told that it began as a simple discussion between two doctors but then grew into a dispute. Do you remember it?”

  Oh did Mondeville remember it! His beautiful, freshly shaven white chin immediately grew red with anger, which he did not try to hide at all.

  “Do you call that old fool a doctor? Be careful, Nogaret: that might be considered a blasphemy.”

  The lawyer mentally recorded the violent reaction of his interlocutor, and adjusted his tone accordingly.

  “I am certainly in no position to assess expertise in medical matters. It is as a doctor, however, that he passes himself off, and as such I know that His Majesty considered him. They even told me that Arnaldo examined all the members of the royal family.”

  “He certainly did. What ignominy! He even claimed that little prince Robert, a child of only two years of age, had a sick heart.”

  “And this was not true?”

  “The young prince is as healthy as a horse. But what is worse, that the old lunatic claimed that the disease should be cured with an extract of digitalis.”

  “I am sorry, I don’t follow…”

  “It is a highly toxic plant, Nogaret. Exceed the correct dose and heart failure becomes cardiac arrest. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to identify the exact quantity for a two-year-old child?”

  Yes, Nogaret understood the surgeon’s apprehension well. Given the situation, Mondeville had absolutely advised against this therapy. Was it possible to blame him?

  “The king has commissioned me to close the investigation that still hangs over the old man’s head,” said Nogaret, “and that being the case, I must clarify every point of uncertainty. I wanted to bring to your attention something that I found in the records of his interrogation. A very singular phrase which a meaning which is, you might say… prophetic. I should inform you that Catalan was my colleague at the University of Montpellier, so I know him well. When I learned that they had arrested him for sacrilege and suspected heresy, I immediately thought that he must be the victim of slander. That phrase that struck me was this: ‘From the tunnels of Notre-Dame, the Antichrist will invade the earth’. I do not think he was actually referring to the day of judgment, even though the matter does certainly have a rather diabolical ring about it. But the old man may have discovered a plan to destabilize the French monarchy. To bring the country to revolt by spreading fear. I think you will have heard what the rumours in the south of France are saying, .”

  Enrico Mondeville listened attentively, and the increasingly rapid movement of his eyes betrayed the bewilderment he was experiencing. Nogaret’s insinuation, with all its chilling implications, was very clear to him.

  “Are you referring to the plague spreaders?”

  “Yes. The two things might be related to one another. Political dissent and the spectre of a divine scourge. In other words, the rioters might try to unleash civil war by spreading a terrible epidemic with diabolical art.”

  “My God, Nogaret! Are you sure?”

  “Let me explain to you the circumstances. A doctor of your experience will surely be able to give me valuable guidance.” The troubles which had erupted in Toulouse during the summer could not simply be a sad coincidence: there had been hundreds of deaths due to an unknown disease and the people had risen up accusing the Albigensian heretics who still lurked in the countryside, and of course, the Jews. Those abominable enemies of the Christian people scattered deadly germs in the waters and fields, people said, and so they must be exterminated, but Bernard Saisset, the bold bishop of Pamiers, saw the situation differently: the plague that had struck the south was caused exclusively by the wrath of God, and was the fitting divine revenge against Philip IV and that terrible arrogance of his that made him even commit sacrilege by refusing to bow to the paternal advice of the pope.

  “So now many vassals of Languedoc hail Bernard Saisset and cheer on hail his protests,” said Nogaret. “They are unhappy about high taxes and so they hope that God wants to inflict upon Philip IV an exemplary punishment. Near the Pyrenees, the fever of revolt is beginning to spread everywhere; why should one respect a cruel ruler who rebels against the sacred authority of the Vicar of Christ? Why suffer God’s wrath because of him?”

  In this dangerous climate, the bishop had even suggested that Philip IV had no right to be on the throne of France and that to allow this usurpation to continue was an affront to God.

  “Do you follow me, Mondeville? Terror of the disease fills the crowds, which are already exhausted by the recent deaths, with anger, and so they end up playing the monsignor’s game for him. Is it a coincidence, or has Saisset secretly made some agreement with those who spread the disease? The Catalan is a doctor, and even if you consider his therapies bold, there is no doubt that the world esteems him. The king held him in high regard, and had entrusted him with certain experiments to be conducted on behalf of the Crown. And while he was at the court, while he was conducting that research on behalf of the sovereign, Arnaldo was accused of impiety and arrested. It is impossible not to conclude that the old man had inadvertently trodden on someone’s feet! But what had he discovered? And who felt threatened?”

  Prey to dull, irrational fear, the royal surgeon now stared into space with vacant eyes.

  “If you are right, Nogaret, then action must be taken immediately,” he murmured in amazement. “Cities can rapidly become so many hotbeds of infection. We must preve
nt contagion!”

  “Perhaps we can beat the plague spreaders to it, . I suspect that the Catalan knew about the conspiracy and was producing an antidote capable of stopping the disease. They say he had a secret laboratory in the crypts below Notre-Dame. Perhaps some of his work is still there.”

  “Really? I would like very much to see it.”

  “So would I, Mondeville, but unfortunately we cannot. Those tunnels are like the Arabian Phoenix – everyone speaks of it but nobody has ever seen it. In short, entry to them cannot be found. I even asked His Majesty for the construction plans, but he claims they do not exist.”

  “How strange!”

  “It certainly is strange!” Nogaret said. “We might even say impossible. I believe that His Majesty does not actually want me to go down there. Perhaps there are other things hidden in those crypts which he prefers to keep hidden.”

  “And how can I help you, Nogaret?”

  “Speak to the sovereign. You are the man to whom he entrusts his health, he will listen to you. And you are a reputable doctor. If the old man has hidden a medicine in those rooms, you would be better able to recognize it than I.”

  Looking almost intimidated by the thoughts that passed through his head, Enrico Mondeville caressed his bald pate with a slow gesture.

  “Very well, Nogaret. I shall do as you say. It is my duty. But…”

  “But?”

  “You are wrong to be so skeptical of the accusations that were addressed to Catalan. He is a dark character, believe me. His medical practices go far beyond being merely unorthodox. When he treats the sick, he does not rely on established practice from the experience of many colleagues. No, he follows his instincts. A kind of extra sense that I really do not know how he could have developed. Although I can easily guess,” he concluded with a shudder.

  “Could you be more clear?”

  Enrico Mondeville gathered his thoughts. Where to start? Perhaps a striking example, would render the idea.

  “I will tell you something that I saw with my own eyes, Nogaret. A man who had been my patient had an incurable disease, and I did not wish to delude him with vain hopes. Months later, that man came to see me. He was intolerably rude to me and I could see the hatred in his eyes. He told me that I was a charlatan and the king was making a terrible mistake by letting himself be deceived by one as incompetent as me. Obviously I asked him the reason for his accusation, since I had nothing to reproach myself for.”

  “And?”

  “He told me that he had gone to the Catalan. He had not held much hope, but Arnaldo had completely cured him of his illness. That fact alone was incredible, but it was as nothing compared to what he told me when I asked him how Arnaldo had done it.”

  “In an… unorthodox way, I presume.”

  Mondeville nodded gravely.

  “The patient told me that Arnaldo had placed him in the centre of a room. It was midnight, and the sun had entered the constellation of Gemini which has beneficial influences on the chest, because the illness from which this man suffered lurked in his lungs. The old man drew a perfect circle around him with a strange black powder. Then the dust suddenly caught fire and burned with a vigorous fire and a pungent smell, like oil. Arnaldo recited strange formulas and meanwhile drew arcane symbols on the man’s bare chest, and then the old man took a handful of clay and rubbed it over the diseased part. When the fire went out, the Catalan moulded the clay into the shape of a man and placed the statuette in a lead coffin – a coffin that was made just like a real one – and he ordered the patient to dig a deep hole in the ground whence to place it. The illness was dead and needed to be buried.”

  The muscles of Nogaret’s mouth contracted in a grimace of tension. That macabre ritual of the burial smacked of an offering to unholy powers.

  “What you tell me is disturbing, Mondeville. And I no longer know what to think.”

  “If I were you, Nogaret, I would think carefully about that old man’s account. I repeat, Arnaldo is a disreputable man. If there really is a plot underway to foment revolt, if someone truly does want to exasperate the people by wearing them down with an epidemic… are you certain it isn’t actually the Catalan who is behind this atrocious plan?”

  No, Nogaret was not at all certain. After what he had heard, he was no longer certain of anything. He knew Arnaldo, and in the past he had a good opinion of him; but it is a sad truth that people change, and sometimes they manage to conceal even from those closest to them the secret of a heart of darkness.

  “For days I have been tormenting myself with this question: if the Catalan is able to create an antidote, is he perhaps also capable of producing the disease?” he said, almost afraid of his own question.

  “Certainly, Nogaret. To find the appropriate cure, one must be intimately familiar with the illness.”

  “If my conjectures are correct then, the fact of possessing that antidote places great power in the old man’s hands. An almost immeasurable power. And that would also explain why His Majesty is so keen on bringing the Catalan back to France! Keen enough to want his trial resumed and concluded and to want Arnaldo completely cleared of the accusation!”

  “It would be logical, of course,” the surgeon nodded. “If the king can able to offer some attractive reward, it may be that the Catalan will agree to return to France. But we must ask ourselves what he will want in return.”

  The lawyer shook his head.

  “I fear that his Majesty would do anything at this point! How could he allow his subjects to be struck down by an epidemic?”

  Mondeville placed a friendly hand on his shoulder.

  “I see that you are shaken. I am sorry, perhaps I have upset you, but it was my duty to do so. My duty to you, and also to His Majesty.”

  Mondeville returned to his place while a dazed Nogaret kept his gaze on the majestic figure of the king of France and contemplated his ritual gestures. The consecrated king, the thaumaturge king, stood solemnly like a stone statue in the nave of Notre-Dame, healing the sick as Jesus once had once healed them. Meanwhile, the lawyer thought, someone else was trying to spread death by exploiting the power of the Evil One. To fight an opponent, you must first know him thoroughly. However dreadful it was, if he wanted to succeed in his mission, it was with someone expert in the Devil’s plots that Nogaret must consult.

  *

  The poor devil hung from a hook that pierced his chin, like some poor butcher’s beast. As he walked past him, Guillaume Nogaret prayed that the man was already dead. His hands had been reduced to an awful bloody pulp by the ferocity of the torturers, and his legs ended in two stumps which had been seared with burning brands. The smell of putrefaction already hovered around that macabre bundle and hungry black ravens circled above him, eager to dine on the soft flesh of his eyes.

  Once through the courtyard, one entered a hall where the air was intolerably heavy with the smell of dead blood and burnt flesh. On long filthy tables and around the room he saw the various tools that some morbid imagination had conceived for the sole purpose of making men wish for death to liberate them from their pain. Pincers, the rack, the wheel that rotates until its victim, tied to it by his hands and feet, faints from pain while his ligaments are broken, and other, even fouler things, which Nogaret preferred not to look at.

  His profound knowledge of Roman law had accustomed him to a certain concept of civilization, so he understood perfectly well that it was legitimate to frighten criminals with the sight of the instruments of torture, and also to make them suffer that measured dose of pain which could loosen their tongues. But that was all it was good for. What use was a man who was mad with pain and whose jaw had been half torn off by the terrible torture of the mouthbreaker? Was he able to speak, to reveal the name of his accomplices?

  No, Nogaret rejected those methods, which at most achieved the despicable purpose of satisfying the morbid ferocity of some perverse executioner. Those methods were not for him, nor even for the man who was leading him through that atrociou
s gallery of horrors.

  “Where are we going, Reverend Father?”

  “To a place that cannot be visited by others. Not even most of we inquisitors.”

  Father Bernard Gui, a native of Toulouse just like Nogaret, was one of the best educated men he had ever met. Having entered the order of Saint Dominic by vocation, he had soon been swallowed up by the Tribunal of the Inquisition for Heresy, where he had distinguished himself by his zeal and scrupulousness, even though his task was not to torment those suspected of corrupting the faith of the Christian people with false religious beliefs. Bernard Gui was a man of letters, not of red-hot pincers. With his profound knowledge of heresy in all its mephitic branches, both the ancient ones and the new ones that arose from the past, he had the delicate task of studying, examining, researching and, only after careful examination, passing judgment.

  “This is where we go down.”

  The Dominican slipped a long black iron key from the cord tied around the waist of his habit, and unlocked a small, creaking door at the back of the room. It opened onto a narrow spiral staircase that gave the impression of descending straight down to the centre of the earth. Nogaret felt an overwhelming sense of anguish as he peered into the darkness down that winding spiral of stone steps which swallowed up the dim gleam of the lantern.

  “You must tell no one that you have been here,” the friar ordered. “The Grand Inquisitor only made an exception because you are investigating on behalf of His Majesty.”

  Nogaret committed himself to silence about his visit. Meanwhile, they had begun to descend into the darkness. How many steps? It was hard to say, because the oppressive sensation he felt seemed to multiply his anguish with every step. Once at the bottom of the stairs, Bernard Gui opened another door and went through it, then held his arm out wide to cast light into the darkness that filled the ambulatory. The shadows shifted and thickened, slipping across paving stones wet with moisture and revealing for a moment a double column of rough-hewn pillars in the stone of the crypt before they were immediately swallowed up by the gloom. The cold down there gnawed at the flesh and gripped the soul.