In the Presence of Evil

by Tania Bayard

‘No one just disappears.’ Christine was suddenly angry at what she thought was a horrible jest.

  Michel and Francesca stood in the doorway. The smile on the monk’s face seemed to light up the room. He said, ‘It’s true, Christine.’

  Francesca was fingering her prayer beads. ‘A miracle!’ she said.

  Christine was incredulous. ‘How is it possible?’

  ‘All I can tell you is, she escaped,’ Michel said. ‘No one knows where she went, but she is still alive, of that I am sure.’

  ‘No one could escape from the Châtelet. But even if she did manage it somehow, sooner or later, she’ll be found. They’ll torture her more cruelly than before, and then they’ll burn her.’ Christine lay back against her pillows. Instead of elation, she felt despair.

  The door downstairs slammed: Georgette had brought the children home. ‘The lady in the dungeon got away!’ they shouted as they raced up the stairs, followed by Goblin. They all burst into the room and stood around the bed, waiting for Christine to speak. Instead, she lay with tears streaming down her cheeks. Thomas leaned down and rubbed his hot cheek against hers. ‘Why are you crying, Mama? She got away.’

  Michel said, ‘Remember the phoenixes and the crows, Christine. A woman with understanding would not be crying.’

  She opened her eyes and the room spun around. ‘What good is understanding now?’

  ‘It will help you find the true murderer. Don’t you see? You have been given another chance to save Alix de Clairy.’

  FORTY

  You should pity fallen women. Pray for them. Give them a chance to reform.

  Christine de Pizan,

  Le Livre des Trois Vertus, 1405

  Christine tried to sit up. ‘That’s better,’ Michel said. ‘Much better than lying there weeping.’

  But she sank back against the pillows again. She felt tired and defeated, not the strong and courageous woman she wished to be.

  Marion put her hands on her hips and leaned over her. ‘You can do it, Lady Christine. I know you can. You’re clever enough to make a dead donkey fart!’

  Marie put on her primmest face, Jean laughed, Thomas fell to the floor whooping with delight, and Lisabetta looked puzzled. Even Francesca was trying not to smile.

  Michel said, ‘What has become of your wits, Christine? Do you not remember what the duke told us about the book?’

  ‘What book?’ Francesca asked.

  Christine’s head ached; she couldn’t manage a long explanation. She said, ‘The book that was stolen from the dead man I found at the palace. Hugues de Précy had it, and his murderer took it. The Duke of Orléans has it now. Gilles found it for him.’

  Francesca shook her head in confusion. ‘Where did Gilles get it?’

  ‘From a bookseller. Of course! The bookseller on the rue de la Harpe.’ She leapt off the bed so quickly she nearly fainted. Marion held her so she wouldn’t try to lie down again.

  Michel grinned at her. ‘You do remember.’

  ‘Yes, I remember. We must find the bookseller.’ But then she was overwhelmed with despair. ‘There are so many booksellers,’ she said, and she slipped out of Marion’s grasp and fell back onto the bed.

  Francesca stood over her, her eyes sparkling. ‘Cara Cristina, do not give up now!’

  Her mother had joined her battle, just as she was about to abandon it. She got up again, more slowly this time.

  ‘Brava,’ Francesca said. ‘But you must not go to look for the bookseller immediately. It is late and it is getting dark.’

  ‘We will go first thing tomorrow morning,’ Michel said. ‘No matter who the bookseller is, he won’t forget who brought him that book.’

  ‘We must have something to eat,’ Francesca said, and she went down to the kitchen, followed by Goblin and the children.

  ‘Keep Marion here for a moment,’ Christine whispered to Michel, and she went after her mother.

  The children were sitting at the table watching their grandmother set out bowls of the soup Christine had started that morning. ‘I have improved this, Cristina,’ Francesca said. ‘Carrots, onions, and parsnips are not enough to make a tasty soup.’

  ‘I’m not interested in recipes for soup,’ Christine said. ‘Where is Gillette?’

  ‘The dose of valerian I gave her was very strong. She is still asleep. She does not yet know Alix has escaped.’

  ‘Then we should let her rest,’ Christine said. ‘But let Marion have supper with us.’

  Francesca started to object, but Thomas got up from the table, went to his grandmother, and put his arms around her. ‘She’s Mama’s friend.’

  Francesca looked over at the other children. ‘Brother Michel brought her, so she can’t be all bad,’ Jean said. ‘I think she should stay.’ Marie nodded in agreement.

  Francesca sighed. ‘All right. But if she is going to talk, I hope she will choose her words wisely.’ The children giggled.

  Christine went to the foot of the stairs and called to Michel and Marion. When Marion came down, she admonished her to be careful what she said in front of the children, but the girl merely lowered her head, looked at her through her eyelashes, and said, ‘From what I’ve seen of those children, I don’t think there is much I could say that would unsettle them.’ She took off her crimson cloak and hung it in the front hall where it perched next to the family’s old black and brown cloaks like a brightly colored bird that had flown off course. What she wore underneath the cloak was just as dazzling – a red-and gold-trimmed emerald green dress with long, pinked sleeves and a turquoise belt embroidered with blue and yellow griffins and centaurs. When she entered the kitchen, Francesca took one look at her and spilled some of the soup she was ladling into a bowl. Goblin crept under the table, and the children stopped eating, spoons in midair. Georgette stood with her mouth open until Christine told her to go somewhere else, and the girl retreated halfway into the pantry.

  Once everyone had settled down, they made short work of the soup. Francesca had added ground almonds, ginger, and various spices, and she pronounced the result acceptable. Georgette stood peering through the door of the pantry, not missing a word of the conversation.

  Francesca leaned across the table and asked Christine, ‘Now will you explain about the book?’

  ‘I found it hidden in the library at the Louvre.’

  ‘Mio Dio! Who hid it there?’

  ‘Gilles. Naturally, I thought he’d murdered Hugues de Précy to get it.’ Francesca shook her head. ‘I know,’ Christine said. ‘But would you have thought differently if you had found it there?’

  ‘I certainly would not have suspected Gilles. Many strange people must come into the library. It could have been one of them.’

  ‘You know nothing about libraries. You don’t even like books.’

  ‘By the bellies of all the apostles!’ Marion cried. ‘Stop arguing and tell us about the book.’

  ‘Yes, tell us,’ said Georgette, who’d crept into the room.

  ‘Gilles bought the book from a bookseller on the rue de la Harpe. We don’t know which one. Then he hid it for a while because he didn’t want the Duke of Orléans to have it.’

  ‘Why did he not want the duke to have it?’

  Michel said, ‘You’re wrong about most books, Francesca, but this one is truly evil. Gilles knows. It is his business to know about books.’

  ‘What’s in it?’ the children asked in one voice.

  ‘Do you remember what I said about the mandrake your mother found in her room?’ the monk asked them.

  ‘We didn’t tell anyone,’ Jean said.

  ‘I know you didn’t. But the same restriction applies to the book. It is more evil than the mandrake. We must not discuss it.’

  Something nagged at the back of Christine’s mind, something she knew she should remember but couldn’t. Before she could think what it was, her mother said, ‘Finish the story, Cristina.’

  ‘Gilles finally realized it was necessary to take the book to the Duke of Orléans. Whe
n I went to the duke this morning, he already had it. That means Gilles isn’t the murderer.’

  ‘I should think not.’

  ‘So who is the murderer?’ Jean asked, pushing his hair out of his eyes and looking just like his father.

  That is what your mother is going to find out, Christine heard Étienne say.

  ‘The book was stolen from Hugues de Précy the night he died, so whoever sold it to the bookseller must be the murderer.’

  Marion sat quietly, her soup uneaten. ‘Was it a book with strange symbols on the cover?’ she asked in a low voice.

  Michel looked at her. ‘Yes, it was. Do you know something about it?’

  She avoided his gaze. ‘One hears about such books.’

  She does know something, Christine thought. But she’ll never admit it to Michel.

  ‘Is the murderer not the angry husband the midwife told us about last night?’ Francesca asked.

  ‘It may be,’ Christine said. ‘But I’m not so certain it was Guy de Marolles. There are other people who wanted to get rid of Hugues de Précy.’

  ‘Henri Le Picart isn’t one of them,’ Michel said.

  She scowled at him. ‘For goodness sake, Michel, why won’t you admit there could be profit for Henri in this?’

  ‘What kind of profit? He doesn’t need money.’

  ‘What about the book?’

  ‘Why do you dislike this Henri le Picart so much, Mama?’ Jean asked.

  Christine felt herself blushing. ‘Wouldn’t you dislike someone who follows you around all the time and glares at you?’

  ‘How do you know he follows you around?’

  ‘He does,’ Marion said. ‘I’ve seen him. On the rue Saint-Antoine. He was probably even there when she almost got eaten by the lions.’

  ‘What lions?’ Francesca cried.

  ‘Michel and I lost our way near the lions’ stockade at the Hôtel Saint-Pol,’ Christine said. ‘But we didn’t get hurt.’

  ‘They were scared to death,’ Marion said.

  ‘Those lions are too old to hurt anyone,’ Thomas said. ‘Besides, they’re locked up.’

  ‘Actually, for a while last night they weren’t,’ Christine said.

  ‘What were you doing near the lions’ stockade?’ her mother wanted to know. ‘Where was the lion keeper? And the woman the midwife told us about, his assistant?’

  Christine said, ‘We were on our way to speak with the Duke of Orléans at the church of the Celestines. And the woman put the lions back in their stockade. That’s enough questions for now, Mama.’

  Michel got up from the table. ‘I must go to the palace. The Duchess of Orléans may be asking for me. I do not think she will live through the night.’ He looked at Christine and said, ‘I forgot to tell you. The queen knows Alix de Clairy did not steal the mandrake. When I was at the palace this morning, I told her about how it had been hung in your fireplace.’

  It was then that Christine remembered what had been at the back of her mind earlier. She said, ‘We never found out what happened to the mandrake, Michel, after it disappeared from the guards’ room.’

  FORTY-ONE

  Many cowardly men have large, strong bodies.

  Christine de Pizan,

  Le Livre de la Cité des Dames, 1404–1405

  Marion left Christine’s house and went across the Île to the left bank of the Seine. She was friends with many of the students from the university who frequented that area, but for once she didn’t stop to talk to anyone. She hurried along the rue Saint-Jacques and down the rue des Écrivains, into the district where manuscript painters, bookbinders, parchment makers, and copyists worked. Along the way, she passed bookshops with painted signs above their doors, but she ignored all those establishments; she knew what she was looking for would not be in any of them. By the time she had reached the rue de la Harpe, it was night, and she could barely see where she was going.

  A group of noisy, drunken students in hooded gowns lurched toward her through the darkness, and she shrank back into a doorway. Most of the students seemed oblivious to her presence, but one short fellow limping along behind the others turned her way as they went by. She suspected he had seen her, so she waited until all the raucous youths were far away before she stepped into the street again. A cat darted out from an alley and yowled as it ran over her boots, its green eyes glinting in the light of a candle in the window of a house across the way. But then the candle flickered and went out, and there was no light save that from the oil lamps burning by the tower gate at the end of the street near the Porte Gibart. She heard a faint crunching sound, like footsteps on pebbles. Before they came close enough for her to discover who it was, she ran to a shabby building without a sign, pushed open the door, and darted in.

  Immediately, she was enveloped in dust, in a room illuminated by only the feeble glow of one small oil lamp hanging from the ceiling. She could see through the gloom well enough to know that a few worm-eaten manuscript pages were strewn about, but she wasn’t interested in those. She walked to a heap of moth-eaten clothes and mangy fur pelts in a corner, almost stumbling over a scrawny brown dog that had hollowed out a nest for himself at the bottom of the pile. Then she went to another corner and inspected a stack of chipped bowls, broken crockery, and dented cooking pots. She lifted several of the pots and found what she was looking for.

  A huge man with an angry red scar on his cheek emerged from behind a curtain at the back of the room. ‘What are you doing there, whore?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to know, you lousy cutpurse.’ She walked up to the man and stood in front of him with her hands on her hips. ‘I want to know about a book you bought and then sold to the king’s librarian.’

  The man shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘It had symbols on the cover – a circle and a sword and a lot of crosses.’

  The man gagged. ‘What business is it of yours?’

  ‘That book was stolen from the Duke of Orléans.’

  Even in the dim light, Marion could see that the man’s face went white and the cicatrix turned a darker red. ‘I don’t know anything about it.’

  ‘The plague take you! That was no ordinary book. I know you had it, and I want to know who brought it here.’

  ‘Suppose I did have it? I wouldn’t tell you about it, you stinking slut.’

  Behind him, a hand pushed aside the filthy curtain, and a woman wearing a tattered chemise and carrying a naked baby slouched into the room. The man shook his fist at her, and croaked, ‘Go to the devil, bitch.’

  The woman ducked to avoid the blow. Bouncing the baby from one hip to the other, she pushed a strand of greasy hair away from her face and stared at Marion with insolent black eyes. ‘Get out!’ the big man said, as he shoved her back through the curtain. Then he came around the table, put his hands on his hips, and thrust his face close to Marion’s. ‘Filthy whore! Go back to your dunghill.’

  Marion stepped back and spat into the moldy rushes on the floor. ‘Don’t order me around, devil’s scum. Tell me what I want to know, or your wife back there will have a crow to pluck.’

  The man raised his hand as if to strike her, but Marion just laughed. ‘You don’t frighten me, donkey pizzle.’ She stepped up to him again, even closer this time. ‘I saw you steal a silver candlestick on the Grand Pont last week, and I know where it is.’ She looked over at the stack of worthless crockery. ‘The sergeants at the Châtelet would be glad to hear about it, and they will, if you don’t tell me who brought you the book.’

  The veins in the man’s forehead throbbed. ‘You didn’t see anything in that pile of junk,’ he whimpered. He slumped back against the table until he was almost sitting on it. Marion started to walk toward the heap of crockery. ‘Wait!’ he cried. ‘I’ll tell you. The miserable book wasn’t worth anything, anyway. I was lucky to be quit of it.’

  ‘Who brought it here?’

  ‘A little boy. I don’t know his name.’

  ‘What did he look like, then?’

&
nbsp; ‘Nothing special. He had a lot of tawny hair. He was wearing a red jacket and a red cap. I can’t tell you anything more.’ Beads of sweat rolled down his cheeks as he watched to make sure she didn’t go near the corner junk pile.

  Marion was certain he’d told her all he knew. The big man was too terrified to hold anything back; he looked as though he was about to faint with fright. She went to the door and stepped out into the street. But before the door swung shut, she looked back and saw that he was still standing by the table, staring after her. She curtsied and raised the fool’s finger at him. I really scared that bastard, she said to herself as she started back toward the river.

  Footsteps sounded behind her, and she walked quickly to the Île, where groups of noisy students hurried to the public houses. She ducked into a tavern, dashed across a room crowded with young men drinking at long wooden tables, pushed aside a heavy leather curtain, and ran into the back room. The tavern owner, who was drawing wine from a cask, looked up. ‘How goes it with you, Marion?’

  Without answering, she peered through a hole in the curtain. Another group of students came in, and with them was Henri Le Picart. She remembered the students who’d passed her on the way to the bookshop. The one who’d turned to look at her must have been Henri. Clever of him to pretend to be limping, she thought.

  Henri stood beside a great stone fireplace that seemed to be throwing off more smoke than heat and stared at the curtain. Marion jumped back. Now there was no doubt in her mind that he was the murderer. She could almost feel his hands around her throat. But when she looked again, she saw that he was leaving. She waited a while, then went into the other room and asked four unsteady youths to accompany her home. They’re so drunk they can hardly stand, she thought, but they’ll make enough noise to frighten him off. We may be arrested by the night watch, but anything is better than being accosted by Henri Le Picart.

  FORTY-TWO

  Even the most wicked of women do not follow you into your house and rape you.

  Christine de Pizan,

  Letter dated 1400–1401