by Mary Novik
“I cannot believe you wrote this so quickly.”
We sat on the cushions, side by side, to improve my Italian phrasing. This was the part of writing we enjoyed most—tossing verses back and forth, cozening the meanings from each word until the nuance was exactly right. We were developing a mutual language, caresses of vowel and consonant, a tongue that we were in no hurry to master. After an hour, we put the poem aside, having taken it as far as we could. In the weeks ahead, he would work alone, balancing the syllables and accents, revising my verses, scoring out and rewriting, until they had a more literary turn. On the page, my poems were heart-simple, written to please him, whereas his were studied, solemn, with an eye to posterity.
He picked up the fair copy of the letter I had brought. “Today I must present this to Giacomo di Colonna, who admires my Latin writings. I am to help him study the church fathers. He is preparing to take orders and suggests I do the same, because he desires more of my company.”
“But surely you don’t wish …”
He was not listening, for eagerness had overtaken him. “His brother is Cardinal Giovanni Colonna, whose household has swept into Avignon like a whirlwind, taking over several grand houses. You must see what it means to me?”
Why was he speaking like this? After two years, I was no closer to marriage than I was in the chapel at Fontaine-de-Vaucluse. When walking with me in the city, he had become scrupulous about keeping a formal distance from me so that people would not guess our relationship. At such times I felt more like his sister than his betrothed.
“Francesco, you have not forgotten that we are promised to each other?”
His eyes drifted away. Like me, he was probably recalling that we had vowed our love in a deconsecrated chapel with no lawful witnesses. I jerked on his sleeve. “Answer me! Why did you betroth yourself to me if you did not intend to keep your vow?”
“But I do intend to keep it! It was a covenant of love, written in sand and water and blown about the air.”
Had all the candles gone out, all the air been extracted from my lungs? My joy was mingled with regret that I had doubted him. He was my own Francesco and always had been.
“Our covenant,” he said, “has more validity than a contract between two people who are bound by their fathers’ wishes. My thoughts have been much occupied with this of late. Marriage has little to do with love, and poetry has little to do with marriage. Think how the troubadours sang most sweetly to women who were not their wives.”
This was not what I wanted to hear, since I wanted him both to wed me and to write poems about me. As he checked the letter I had brought, I rubbed my thumb joint where it ached from copying. Satisfied, he poured on some green wax and pressed his ring into it, preparing it for Giacomo di Colonna.
“There is something else I have been contemplating.” He held up the letter to admire the Petrarch family seal. “Courtly poetry is never written to a social inferior. It is always addressed by the poet to a bella donna far above him in station.”
In the days that followed, I carried this pain delicately behind my eyes. The two words, bella donna, had fallen heavily upon me. Very happy he was with these bons mots, with no care for the barb he had inflicted, for there was nothing noble about my lineage. In spite of his plan to take minor orders, Francesco was no monk. In bed, he loved me well and truly, as I did him. To forbid him my bed would be to punish myself unnecessarily, for even when he was not with me I retired in joy each night and rose in remembered pleasure.
On the day before Michaelmas, I was using bâtarde to make splendid copies of Francesco’s poems, which he would give to seigneurs to win favour. As I transcribed the madrigal about my bathing naked at Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, I observed that Francesco had changed the woman’s hair from red to flaxen. Strange things had happened to the poems since I had last set eyes on them. The poet could neither eat nor sleep from lovesickness, a disease that appeared to have robbed him of good sense as well as rest. Amongst the drafts, I found a sonnet in which he spelt the woman’s name for all of Avignon to see: LAUdare et REverire.
There was no point looking for this paragon in the city, for she existed only in the realm of poetry. Or so I comforted myself until I began to copy the sonnet, Et se di lui fors’ altra donna spera, vive in speranza debile et fallace … If some other woman desires my heart, she lives in fallacy and feeble hope. At this line, my heart plummeted. By this second woman, did he mean me? He had gone too far if he expected me to copy this without complaint. I cast it aside and picked up the final poem, the one I had written about the stag. I assessed the damage Francesco had done to it, then sharpened a goose feather to a wicked point with my miséricorde to strike out the worst phrases. However, I could not bring myself to harm the poem and had just begun to copy Francesco’s version, when Gherardo threw open the door, whistling a foolish tune. Why did he never knock?
“This looks like a real scriptorium now.” He drilled his fingers on the broadsides. “Are these the presentation copies?”
“I am just finishing the last one. Why didn’t Francesco come himself?”
Gherardo shrugged and I thought, not for the first time, of the difference between the brothers. Gherardo was a scapegrace, a princely flâneur. So good was he at avoiding any industry that he pursued none at all. He would always be a drain on Francesco. He lifted the lid on a skillet, dipped his finger to taste the sauce, then noticed the well-stoppered jug of ale. Beside it was a single cup. After a moment’s hesitation, he poured ale into the cup, and set cup and jug next to me.
This scrap of kindness undid me. My anger evaporated and I felt ill at Francesco’s betrayal. “Why does Francesco do this?” I asked. “He has changed my stag to a doe. It wasn’t daybreak, it wasn’t spring, and I was wet by a storm, not by falling in a river.”
“You don’t know?” he blustered. “You’re the one who’s been copying his concetti about a cruel mistress whose eyes burn, then freeze him.”
“This poem about the doe is different, more original.”
“Francesco is simply observing the conventions of courtly love. Readers expect the lady to have skin of ivory, hair of gold, brows of ebony, teeth of pearl. Her lips are blood-red. And so it goes, down to her toenails, ad unguem.”
“So this one is about the woman also?”
I pushed the jug towards him to loosen his tongue. He took a draught and ran his sleeve over his mouth. Half the drink had landed on his shirt.
“Are you truly ignorant of who this Laura is? You saw her yourself on the day you predicted the downfall of the papacy.” He recited glibly,
Blest be the hour, the day, the month, the year,
Blest be the season, country, and the sphere,
The very moment and the very place,
Where I beheld her perfect face.
“Of course!” I reached for the jug and took a pull from it. “The girl he met in the church of Saint Clare, the ivory maiden who smelt of violets. So she is his bella donna!” I had copied the words, but had deceived myself, unwilling to see the truth before me. Francesco probably thought I had guessed long before. “She wore an Avignon coat of arms, so her father will have arranged her betrothal. Francesco would not be able to even see her.”
“Is that what you think?” For all his disaffected air, Gherardo was observing me with concern. “Come with me,” he said, rolling up the finished poems.
He struck out north towards the city gate with the broadsides under his arm. We cut through the stomach of Avignon, past fishmongers and poultry-men whose throttled chickens danced with flies, to the good quarter of the city, where the noble mansions felt the clean air descending from Doms rock. When we reached a mansion built of yellow stone, Gherardo led me through the servants’ gate into the rear of the courtyard.
“Stand out of sight behind the shrubbery, where Checco stands in the morning to watch Laura comb her hair at the window.”
He watched her comb her hair at the window? I stared at the house in disbelief. Th
e garden was being readied for the fête of Saint Michel. The master, a man of advanced years, was giving his servants directions about a heavy basket. They dragged it into the shade, while Gherardo lounged at the edge of the garden, trying to catch the steward’s eye. As soon as the steward saw Gherardo, he hurried him from view, for the ladies were entering in flowing surcots to pick sugared grapes from the decorated shrubs. At their centre was the pale maiden with the large nose and flaxen hair, wearing a pearl choker around her neck. Her abdomen was gently rounded and her head erect, probably from balancing a psalter on it in deportment lessons. I watched her until Gherardo returned without the broadsides, flipping a purse with satisfaction.
“You have been selling our poems to Laura’s father!”
His mouth split into a grin. “Not her father, her husband—Hugues de Sade. They call him le Vieux. He’s a jumped-up bourgeois, the owner of the de Sade woollen looms. She is the one with the noble blood, the daughter of the chevalier Audibert de Noves, who gave her that nose.”
So Laura was married, and to a man twice her age. Gherardo’s vulgarity did not change the facts. It sickened me to think that Francesco found Laura even more desirable because he could not have her. He knew that Laura’s husband guarded her vigilantly from admirers. That was why the doe’s collar was inscribed with Caesar’s words, Nessun mi tocchi. Touch me not.
“Where did Francesco tell you to take the broadsides?”
“He wanted me to carry them as love gifts to Laura, but why waste good verses?”
Love gifts to Laura? I stumbled backwards, as wretched as a child who has eaten a bellyful of unripe fruit. Was this what lovesickness felt like, a cold sweat followed by a rabid fever? My heartache must have showed, for Gherardo was sizing me up, probably wishing he had not brought me.
“Instead of giving the poems away, I sell them to put provisions in our larder,” he said, “like knocking two apples from the same tree. Do not even consider reporting this to Francesco. If you do, I will tell him that Laura saw you spying on her.”
We both knew that Francesco’s pride would not bear such a thing. Whatever name he gave to me—and I could only fear what it was—he must be ashamed of our connection. This was why he had told me our betrothal must always be written on the sand and air, not parchment. It would not further Francesco’s standing as a love poet for it to come out that he had carnal dealings with a flesh-and-blood woman. Worse, if he was humiliated, everything between us—every joy I felt when by his side—would be snatched away from me.
From behind the shrubbery, we watched the entertainment taking place. The nobles and their wives gathered as de Sade gave Laura a beribboned key. When she unlocked the large basket, the four sides fell flat onto the ground to reveal a turbaned youth folded into a human puzzle. First one black arm emerged, then another, then a leg and a second leg. He must have been in pain, but he stood to full height, slowly and proudly, in his blue loincloth, as all the guests applauded.
I suppose it was something to boast of, having a poet in love with your wife in the troubadour fashion, like having an Indian in a box who would unfold himself for your guests for a few coins. However—and this gave me a moment’s satisfaction—Gherardo should have taken a closer look at the poems before selling them. De Sade would approve of the sonnet on the taming of the doe, but he would not like Francesco’s madrigal about the woman bathing in the pool at Fontaine-de-Vaucluse. De Sade might well wonder what his pale, perfect wife had been up to and tighten the collar around her neck. Perhaps he would even throw her—and her lovesick poet—to the hounds.
Nineteen
WHEN GHERARDO next arrived at the Cheval Blanc with a fistful of poems for copying, I sent them back to Francesco. He even tried sending Guido Sette with a letter, but I told Guido to return it to Francesco. Laura was festering between us, a wound gone septic. I punished myself with his absence for seven days. I would triumph over my desire for him. I would.
On the eighth day, Francesco arrived, evidently believing that he could cajole me into better humour. He dragged over Luc’s chair and spun it around to sit facing me.
“If you brought work, put it beneath those manuscripts. I will do it when I have time.”
“These are our poems, Solange, the ones we are composing together.”
“Those you must take to another copyist, if you can find one who writes bâtarde as well as I do.”
His face was a study—puzzled, unbelieving. “Were you not proud to copy the last poems? Many of them travelled from your heart to my head and back to your pen. And now I am presenting them to the nobles of Avignon.”
Had my love only fed his vanity? Certainly, my stomach was no fuller and neither was my purse. “You must begin to pay me, Francesco. I have made Luc a journeyman, but I cannot frank him unless I keep us both employed.”
“Pay you for what?” His hand grazed my arm.
“For my copying, of course.”
“And the other? Is that free?” He was teasing me. “I will be able to pay you when my friendship with Giacomo di Colonna matures. His recognition sets me in good standing with men of influence.”
“And drives a wedge between us,” I said bitterly.
“You and I are as close as this”—he wove his fingers together—“but I cannot write about it for the nobility to read. The seigneurs wish to hear a poet paying tribute to one of their own.”
“You mean Madame de Sade.”
“So that is why you are out of temper. You know the code of amour courtois as well as I do. I write poems to noblewomen as a courtesy to their families. My reputation is growing amongst these rich chevaliers.”
Bold, piercing words, since he had yet to find a patron. “Your ambition blinds you, Francesco. Even if you receive great honours, only your name will appear on the poems, not mine. Love poetry is always written by a man, not a woman.”
He did not deny it. “I will share all the rewards and praise with you.” He walked the legs of his chair closer so he could place a much-folded sheet on the table between us. “Listen as I read this and tell me where the rhythm falters.”
It was a worked-up poem, one we had created jointly, a temptation I could not resist. But this was not all he wanted in the half-dark of evening, and in my half-folly, half-wisdom, I gave it to him. I defy any woman to put aside a man who can bring her to the crest of desire and ease her down again. He lay beside me afterwards, and I could scarcely breathe. His arm lingered across my breasts as the moon slanted through the shutters and his fingers throbbed gently, as if mapping out the verses of a new poem.
The seasons drifted by, cold and achingly damp, then hot and sweet, until autumn came round again. Late on Saint Martin’s Eve, the wind blew up, banging the shutters on the Cheval Blanc and scraping my ears raw. In the morning, I went outside to observe the damage. Hollowed by heart-rot, the ancient sycamore had broken at the waist and fallen into the canal. It had split the blades of the paddlewheel, justifying the cloth-workers’ hatred of it all these years.
Would the mistral blow three, six, or nine days this time? I stuffed the shutters full of straw to keep out draughts, then lit the lamp on my table. Between now and Quadragésime, fifteen weeks by the calendar, Luc and I would need lamplight for copying, as well as a fire to warm our fingers and drive the moisture out of the parchment. At least we no longer had to solicit trade. Merchants and tradesmen sought us out with more work than we could copy.
Even now, a parade of boots sounded on the stairs. The officials of the Worshipful Company of Leather-workers swept in wearing festival gowns so long they dragged. At their head was the bookseller, Belot, who had been the leader of this band of ruffians for as long as I had known him.
I put down my quill. “What do you want, Belot?”
“To inspect your workshop.”
“I do not belong to your confraternity,” I pointed out. “I asked to join, but you did not let me.”
He signalled to his confrères to begin. If they challenged my abil
ity as a scribe, I would counter with examples of my finest work. Most of them had no claim to be literate, let alone scribes. The most talented amongst them was Belot’s parchmenter, who ripped the skin from dead calves and cut it into book-sized pieces. I bought my parchment from him to keep Belot at arm’s length, paying through the nose for the privilege. Years ago Belot and I had come to an agreement. I could copy for anyone I wished, as long as I gave the binding work to him.
I stood aside as Belot prodded my supplies with his knife, lifting sheets to see what lay beneath. He seemed surprised at the quality of my copybooks, amongst them a good psalter and a decorated book of hours. Codices awaited payment, all bound at Belot’s own workshop, for I had been scrupulous. A felt-lined case popped open to expose ink-pots from Paris. Belot dunked a monstrous finger in the grey liquid, smeared it on parchment, and held the mess over my lamp to see whether the ink darkened. Oak-gall, the highest quality, with a trace of wormwood to keep mice away. He sniffed the pot to be certain. When he turned up nothing to use against me, he motioned to the shortest of his confrères, who reached into his gown for a maroon-bound volume.
Belot pawed to the final page. “This is your colophon, yet the book was bound by a Florentine in Carpentras. Is that or is that not the stranger’s mark, Rostand?”
“Ouais,” the short man agreed. “Mais voilà.”
I took it from him to a chorus of sniggers. On the binding, a man and woman embraced in a loggia. Inside were the delicate poems, now smudged by crude fingerprints, that Dante had written about Beatrice. The Vita Nuova I had copied at Clairefontaine. I had last seen it when I lent the unbound quires to Francesco, who had promised to guard them vigilantly.
“This is mine. Where did you get it?”
“From a pawnbroker in the Jewry,” Belot said, “for a florin.”