by Tania Bayard
Suddenly, a girl in a red cloak dashed past her, swinging a large brown sack over her head and taunting someone who came rushing out of the cemetery. When Christine tried to step aside, she collided with a man in a hooded black cloak and fell to the ground. The girl with the sack started to run in the other direction, but the man was too fast for her. He grabbed her around the neck and wrenched the sack from her hands. Then the white dog jumped out of Christine’s arms and ran toward the pair, snarling and barking. The man let out a terrified scream, dropped the sack, and fled. Before he disappeared from sight, Christine, watching stupefied from the ground, noticed his feet: he wasn’t wearing shoes.
The girl in the red cloak looked at the dog and laughed. ‘A man like that, afraid of a runty little thing like you!’ she said. She picked up the sack and hurried off. Christine knew she was a prostitute named Agnes who worked at a brothel on a nearby street. She struggled to her feet and called after her. But the girl was gone.
Christine looked down and saw that her cloak was caked with mud. She would have to go home and clean it before she went to the queen.
She hoped this was the end of the trouble her mother’s signs had warned about, but she had the uneasy feeling it wasn’t.
TWO
Everywhere there are more brothels than any other kind of house.
From a thirteenth-century poem
The brothel where Agnes worked was in an old cottage on a little street known as the rue Tiron. Seen from the outside, the building looked neglected, for its roof tiles moldered under grey-green moss and its half-timbered walls dripped with rot. On the inside, however, it was well tended, and even on snowy winter days it was warm and comfortable. Rushes blocked the cold air seeping up through cracked wooden floorboards, oiled parchment over the windows shut out the wind, and a fire blazed in a large fireplace. Private spaces, partitioned off by cracked leather curtains, offered stained but serviceable straw-filled mattresses and hot-bodied women to go with them. Used only during the daylight hours, the brothel was a popular stopping place.
On the morning of the day of Christine’s encounter with the hooded man with bare feet, a prostitute named Marion arrived late at the cottage. She was a tall girl with bright red hair bound in strings of glittering gold beads, and she wore a fur-lined purple cloak and a green and yellow dress decorated with handmade embroidery. Marion cared little for laws forbidding prostitutes to wear such colorful clothes. As she strode through the falling snow, she glowed like a tropical bird.
Pushing aside the snow-covered canes of brambles sweeping over the path to the door of the cottage, Marion sang a ditty about a nun and a priest and was just getting to the bawdy part when a man in a hooded black cloak came from behind, pushed her down, and rushed into the brothel. ‘Son of a whore,’ she cried as she picked herself up. She ran in after him and watched in amazement as he raced around overturning everything in sight. Benches teetered on their sides, a trestle table lay on its back like a beast with its legs in the air, and drinking cups and wine jugs flew by her head. Startled prostitutes and their clients emerged from the curtained rooms and shrank back as the man dashed past them into the private spaces and ripped apart the mattresses. Finding nothing in any of those, he darted back into the communal room and hurled himself up a ladder to the loft. There he found what he was looking for. Clutching a large brown sack to his chest, he jumped down to the floor below and stood for a moment, glaring at the prostitutes and their clients with red-rimmed eyes half-hidden in the shadow of his cowl. Marion, the only one who was fully dressed, lunged at him, but he shoved her away, dropping the sack as he did so. A large book tumbled out. He grabbed it and thrust it back into the sack, but not before she had seen the book’s leather cover, which was inscribed with strange symbols. The man stared at her and said, ‘Tell your friend Agnes she’s as good as dead if I ever see her again.’ Then he ran out the door.
Marion was too stunned to cry out. But before the door swung shut, she noticed that the man’s feet were bare.
THREE
Many women have the courage, strength, and daring to take on and complete successfully the same noble tasks undertaken by conquerors and celebrated men of war.
Christine de Pizan,
Le Livre de la Cité des Dames, 1404–1405
Christine returned home, her throat tight with apprehension about what her mother would say when she saw her dirty cloak. But to her surprise, her mother wasn’t there, and the hired girl had no idea where she’d gone. Now Christine was no longer angry with her mother; she was worried. Francesca never went out in winter weather. Many years earlier, on her way from Italy to her new home in France, she’d hurt her leg falling from a horse in an Alpine pass, and ever since she had been terrified of snow.
In spite of her worries, Christine couldn’t wait around until her mother came home, so she cleaned the mud off her cloak and set out for the palace again. It was still snowing, and the streets were slippery, but she walked quickly, until something brushed against her leg and she nearly fell once more. She’d forgotten all about the little white dog. He stood on his hind legs and whined.
‘You scared that horrid man. I suppose you could do it again,’ she said, as she picked him up and continued on her way. But when she drew near the palace, she nearly turned around and headed back home again, for in front of her was the barefoot man in the black cloak. The dog growled, but she held him close and watched until the man had disappeared into the courtyard of the queen’s residence. Then she continued on. She was afraid, but she needed to complete her work.
The gatekeeper at the queen’s residence recognized her and let her through, then ignored her as he watched the street. She entered the courtyard and looked around. The man with the bare feet was nowhere to be seen, but she knew there were many places where he could be hiding, places she’d hidden in herself when she was a child, because the palace, the Hôtel Saint-Pol, was like a small city in which the residences of the king and queen were part of a larger complex of gabled and turreted mansions, streets, galleries, courtyards, stables, orchards, and gardens. Hundreds of people lived or worked there, though none of them were out on that wintry morning. The only sounds she heard were the moaning of the wind and the roaring of the king’s lions in their stockade near an orchard on the other side of the royal enclave.
Ignoring her fears, she started across the courtyard. The snow came down faster than before, and the wind played with the flakes, sending them dancing around her boots and nudging them into piles at the base of the courtyard wall. Intent on looking around for the man with the bare feet, she slipped on the icy cobblestones and reached out to steady herself against the basin of the big central fountain, which was empty of water but rapidly filling with snow. She looked up at the stone lion sitting at the top of a pillar in the middle of the basin and cried, ‘A pox on you, dandin!’
Someone laughed, and the laughter was so full of mirth, she knew it couldn’t be that of the ghostly man with the bare feet. She crept around the fountain and found crouched on the other side a stocky little boy in a red jacket and a red cap that only partially concealed a thicket of tawny curls.
‘You spoke to the stone lion,’ the boy said, giggling. He jumped to his feet, and his red cap fell off. He ran a bare hand through his unruly hair.
‘Don’t you have gloves?’ she asked.
‘For certain.’ He pulled a pair of gloves out from under his red jacket, held them up for her to see, and tucked them back under the jacket. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked as he scooped up some snow from the basin of the fountain and made a snowball.
‘To see the queen.’ The white dog poked his head out from under her cloak. She held him out to the boy. ‘I found him in the street. Perhaps you’d like to have him for a pet.’
The boy dropped the snowball and reached for the dog, which leapt into his arms. ‘My grandmother won’t let me keep him.’
‘Then you can play with him for a while, and I’ll take him when I come back.’
‘Do you know my grandmother? She sews for the queen and her ladies.’
She nodded, for she knew that his grandmother, whose name was Blanche, was one of the many seamstresses who served Queen Isabeau and her ladies-in-waiting. A tall, silent woman who wore plain black or brown cloaks and unadorned cottes that contrasted with the richly colored brocade, damask, and silk gowns worn by the ladies of the court, she lived in the city and often came to the palace. She appeared forbidding, but Christine had seen her smile when she was with the little boy in red who stood before her, his eyes sparkling as he fondled the white dog.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked.
‘Renaut.’
She looked toward the entrance to the palace and saw the portier who stood guard beckoning to her. ‘I must go in. Take good care of the dog for me,’ she said as she walked away.
The boy called after her, ‘What’s his name?’
She thought for a moment, then called back over her shoulder, ‘Goblin.’
The portier, a burly giant named Simon who’d worked at the palace for many years and had known her since she was a child, smiled and said, ‘You should not tarry out there in the snow. You look cold.’
She knew her nose was running, her eyes were tearing, and her face was bright red. She tried – unsuccessfully, because her fingers were stiff – to push some wayward strands of hair back under her hood. Then she pointed to Renaut, who was throwing snowballs and laughing when they broke into pieces as the white dog tried to catch them. ‘Isn’t that boy too young to be out there by himself?’
‘For sure he is. He’s only seven. But I watch over him while his grandmother is inside.’
‘Where are his parents?’
‘His mother is dead. The father?’ Simon shrugged. ‘He has an aunt, Blanche’s other daughter, but she’s no help, even though she lives right here at the palace.’ He touched his forehead with the tip of a finger.
‘She lives here?’
‘Well, Not exactly here. With the lions.’
Christine had heard about the strange woman who helped the king’s lion keeper, but she’d never seen her, and she suspected not many people had, because the reclusive woman never left the lions’ stockade.
‘That’s Blanche’s daughter?’
Simon laughed. ‘Surprising, isn’t it. You’ll never see the two of them together, although her mother must go to visit her sometimes.’
Christine looked over at Renaut, who was now running around the fountain, with the dog at his heels. ‘Will Blanche come to get the boy soon?’
‘Probably not. There’s to be a wedding ball next week, so she’s working on the ladies’ new gowns. Everything has to be tried on. It will take time. But he’s safe with me.’
Christine turned to go into the palace, but Simon held up his hand. ‘Do not go in just yet. There are no guards in the great gallery. The queen’s monkey climbed up one of the tapestries and threw a turd down on them. They are chasing him all around the palace.’ The big man doubled over with laughter, then straightened up and said in a worried voice, ‘They should not have left their posts. There is a man in there who disquiets me. You had best wait here until they come back.’
Christine shuddered. ‘A man in a black cloak turned in here just before I did. He wasn’t wearing shoes. Is it he?’
‘In truth, it is. I would not have admitted him, but I had orders. He is delivering something to the Duke of Orléans.’
She hesitated, then walked to the door. ‘I’m not afraid,’ she said, as she entered the palace.
The gatekeeper called out to Simon, ‘She’ll be back soon if she sees that man in there. She’s not as brave as she looks.’
Simon shook his head. ‘I would not be so sure about that.’
Christine hurried through the entrance hall, shook snow from her cloak, and stepped into a great gallery, a cavernous space deserted except for the wind, which followed her in and set the heavy tapestries on the walls straining and grating against the metal hooks attaching them to moldings under the ceiling. Her footsteps resounded on the hard wooden floor, and the gallery echoed with the distant shouts of the guards searching for the monkey in another part of the palace. Carved basilisks, griffins, and sharp-toothed dragons leered at her from the arms and tops of high-backed chairs standing against the walls, and the place stank of monkey dung.
A group of courtiers in broad-brimmed beaver hats came in, stamping their feet and brushing snow from their clothes. In low voices, they spoke of the king.
‘He’s changeable, like the wind. But he seems in his right mind at the moment,’ said a tall man in a blue velvet mantle.
‘That may be, but he sits for hours without speaking. What will happen when the demons attack him the next time?’ asked a fat gentleman in a green fur-lined cape.
They all bowed their heads and tiptoed through a side door, leaving Christine alone again.
Usually when she walked through the gallery, she stopped to admire the scenes in the tapestries, but she was hesitant to do so on a day when a hooded phantom might be lurking nearby. Still, she paused when she came to an open door. She recognized the king’s high-pitched voice, and she looked into the room.
King Charles, wrapped in a voluminous red velvet houppelande embroidered with silver lilies, stood before a huge fireplace, his head bowed and his arms hanging limp at his sides. He was still the tall, broad-shouldered man Christine remembered, but he looked much older than his twenty-five years. His face was drawn, his long blond hair and beard were unkempt, and he stood hunched over like an animal that has been beaten and expects another blow. She could see nothing in him of the cheerful little boy she’d played with as a child.
Standing beside the king was his younger brother Louis, the Duke of Orléans. Unlike the king, he was clean shaven, slender and graceful in a blue-and-gold brocaded tunic lined with sable. Christine had never trusted Louis, for even as a child he’d been moody and unpredictable, and at twenty-one, he was even more so – a brilliant, tormented man who alternated between spells of debauchery and periods of repentance that sent him weeping to the nearby church of the Celestine monks to ask God to forgive his sins. Of the two brothers, Louis, sly and secretive, seemed the one more likely to be possessed by demons.
The king began to shamble back and forth on the fireplace hearth, his face glistening with perspiration, his arms twitching as if pulled by invisible strings. Several sergeants-at-arms who stood nearby were alert, ready to spring into action as they watched the long sleeves of the king’s red houppelande swirl dangerously close to the tossing flames. The duke merely watched, with a curious expression on his handsome face; he reminded Christine of a cat, ready to pounce.
So engrossed in the scene was Christine that she forgot about the hooded man with the bare feet. Then she remembered: he was supposed to be delivering something to the duke. But he wasn’t in the room with the king and his brother. Afraid he might be creeping up behind her, his cold feet soundless on the wooden floor, she turned quickly, nearly fell, and had to reach out for the wall to steady herself. Her hand brushed against one of the tapestries. She looked up and saw an alarming scene: a city was on fire, and the terrified citizens leapt from the roofs of crumbling buildings into the flames.
‘Babylon destroyed by the wrath of God,’ a soft voice behind her said.
Christine swung around and saw with relief that the voice came not from the barefoot man but from a young woman carrying a small harp in a blue velvet sack.
‘I startled you. Forgive me,’ the woman said.
‘It wasn’t you. It was the tapestry,’ Christine said, not wanting to admit that what she’d really feared was the man with bare feet.
‘I would have thought nothing could frighten you.’
‘Whatever gave you that idea?’
‘I know who you are. You’re a scribe, and you go about the city as you wish. Most women are content to remain at home with their housework.’
Christine laughe
d. That was what her mother thought she should do: stay at home with the cooking and sewing.
‘But the tapestry is frightening,’ her companion said. ‘Paris is like that. Sometimes I think the city is doomed, like Babylon, and we will all fling ourselves into the fire.’
‘Paris does not please you?’
‘Not from what I have seen of it so far.’
Christine knew that this young woman, Alix de Clairy, was the bride of the knight and royal chamberlain Hugues de Précy, one of the king’s favorites, who had brought her to Paris from her home in Picardy. She was a childlike person, with eyes of intense green, a dusting of freckles across her nose that made her seem even younger than her sixteen years, and an irreverent manner. Unlike the other ladies at the court, she didn’t redden her lips with madder, pluck her hair to make her forehead higher, or whiten her face with wheat flour. As she looked at her, Christine put her hand to her own face, and touched the pockmark, hoping it didn’t show. She adjusted her hood and noted with satisfaction that although Alix wore a proper starched linen headdress, she had trouble keeping her auburn hair under it.
Christine remembered the first time she’d seen Alix de Clairy, in the queen’s chambers. It had been an enchanting scene: Alix, wearing a bright blue cotte, an embroidered belt with a large silver buckle, and a long necklace of blue and green beads, perched on a stool, singing to the accompaniment of her harp; Queen Isabeau, a small, dark woman in a green houppelande, reclining against a big red pillow on her ceremonial bed; the queen’s dwarf, dressed in a similar green gown, squatting on the floor in a trance; the queen’s fool, watching from the doorway, for once not babbling to herself. Even the queen’s white greyhound, sitting beside the bed with his head tilted to one side, had been charmed by the music. The queen’s ladies-in-waiting, however, had retreated to the other side of the room, where they stood chattering, while Catherine de Fastavarin, the queen’s favorite, sat on a large blue cushion next to the bed, turning her head away from Alix and pretending not to hear.