Muse

by Mary Novik

  I could scarcely take it in—Francesco must have pawned my copy, although he knew I had written each word painstakingly by hand. Belot had likely paid less, but I gave him the florin anyway. “Now, leave and take your bloodhounds with you.”

  His lips drew back around his yellowed teeth. “You have broken our agreement by paying swindlers to do your binding. You have taken bread from our mouths. Has she not, gentlemen?” The chorus of fools concurred and he proclaimed, “You are henceforth barred from copying in the city!”

  If I defended myself, the confraternity would trump up another charge, for their real complaint was that I had been charging a lower tariff for better calligraphy. My facility with scripts and languages had brought me work no one would entrust to them, but saying so was no way to win them over.

  “Let me beg the privilege, once more, of joining your confraternity,” I said. “I will pay back fees for six years, enough to mount your feast of the Virgin. Don’t be pigheaded. You won’t get another denier if you drive me out of business.”

  Belot crossed his arms judicially. “No woman can work for us unless she is a wife, daughter, or widow of a guilds-man.” This wisdom was cheered by his confrères, large and small. Belot pointed at the shortest, the bookbinder with the bandy legs. “You there! Confiscate her leather goods and let no man sell her more!”

  But this short fellow had a mind of his own. He had not washed and combed his hair to visit the female scribe only to have Belot order him around. He spat upon the floor, declaring, “You do not need to be my wife to work for me. You can be my paramour, my leman!”

  At this fine offer, the men broke out in whoops and hollers, patted one another festively on the back, and shoved the bookbinder towards me like a bridegroom. I propelled him back, cursing him in the old tongue, which he understood, for he spat some insults at me and led the confrères in stripping my shelves bare of goods, ready quires, and parchment. They broke my table, stomped on my quills, and left in good cheer, carrying away everything of value. I was now blacklisted and no one in the Worshipful Company of Leather-workers could hire me without violating the city’s guild system.

  As Belot packed off my case of Paris ink, the tinny bell sounded for prayer at the chapel of the Pénitents gris. Outside, the mistral was howling, settling in for a lengthy stay. My livelihood was gone. My scriptorium lay in ruins and everything I had worked for had been swept away. My days as a femme seule were over. Fortune had grimaced and spun her wheel, unseating me once more.

  Twenty

  IN THE COOL OF MORNING, I hung out the window to listen to the water rushing over the paddlewheel’s new blades and watch the dyers’ children playing along the canal. My own day began a little later. I worked for merchants in their premises or directly from the street, operating from a stall I could pack up if any of Belot’s men appeared. Over the winter, I saw little of Francesco, who had been drawn more deeply into Giacomo di Colonna’s circle. In June, Giacomo rode west to Lombez to take up his post as bishop, with his men riding in convoy, Francesco amongst them. Francesco’s letters to me were full of banter—long, elegant meanderings of keen observation. I knew that they were written not so much to me as to posterity, and I refolded them to return to him. At summer’s end, Francesco wrote to say that the bishop had recommended him to his brother, Cardinal Colonna. He signed his name in the Italian manner, Petrarca.

  Now Francesco was back in Avignon, and we were to meet in the cimetière des pauvres, for he was wary of being seen at the Cheval Blanc. Inside the entrance to the cemetery, a pig was rooting in the spongy earth to get at a freshly buried corpse. As the sun climbed, the starlings began to fish for termites in the leaf litter and the students emerged from the shanties where they lived. I opened my stall on top of an ancient sarcophagus, as I had done many times throughout the summer. Francesco arrived, boosted me onto the sarcophagus, then sat beside me.

  “Have you presented yourself to Cardinal Colonna?” I asked.

  “Yesterday, as soon as I returned. His men are fifty strong, one-tenth of the Pope’s own court, and have great need of culture. He has made me their companion-at-table.”

  “You will be a splendid ornament! I am not surprised that your sober habits won over the cardinal.”

  “I will also be their chaplain. Before I left Lombez, I took minor orders.” He said this in a cowardly rush. “Don’t glare at me, Solange. I am a minor cleric, not a priest.”

  The sarcophagus felt cold beneath my thighs. “But now you cannot marry. You have betrayed our vows in the chapel at Fontaine-de-Vaucluse.”

  He reached for a hand, but I had tucked both away. “That night was long and full of exquisite love, Solange. You expected a betrothal and I did not wish to disappoint you.”

  This sank in painfully. “Was it only courtesy that bound you to me?”

  “You know it wasn’t. I wanted you as wholeheartedly as you did me—and I still do.”

  “Yet you did not hesitate to pawn my Dante book, knowing how precious it is to me. The leather-workers discovered that it was bound in Carpentras and the guild has blacklisted me. You must help me find other work, Francesco. There are many libraries in Avignon and few scribes with colophons as good as mine. You have the power to introduce me, to commend me as a scribe.” When his eyes evaded mine, I took a different tack. “Your cardinal requires books for his young men. Could you arrange a commission for me?”

  He jumped off the sarcophagus. “I cannot risk all so soon. Wait until I am lodged in Colonna’s household.” Then, in a burst of remorse, he added, “I will give you all my own copy work and will pay you as soon as I can.”

  When would that be? Today, the wind was stirring, and at any moment might turn malignant. Soon it would be winter and too cold for me to write outside. Around us, students were sharing free bread from the Pignotte, brushing crumbs off their clothes, tugging down their hats against the chill. Some were kicking chestnuts as an excuse to watch us, which upset me.

  “These students wonder what our business is together,” I said. “Since you have taken minor orders, we must break from each other. Your love has ruined me, Francesco. No one will marry me now.”

  “And I cannot marry either,” he said. “So we are together, as we have always been, sheltered from scrutiny by my attentions to Laura.”

  “Do you expect me to believe that you are using her as a blind?”

  “Laura is ethereal, like Beatrice. For you, I feel the affinity Paolo did for Francesca.”

  “Whom Dante consigned to the second circle of hell for their lust.”

  He laughed. “And what sweet new poetry he made from it—dolce stil novo!” He kissed my knuckles, likely recalling the shape of my bed, its comforting draperies, the nights spent together. “What am I thinking? You must be cold and hungry.” He hailed a passing vendor, inspected the pies, and chose one with eels, hot peppers, and garlic.

  I took a bite. “This is too strong.”

  He broke off a piece to taste. “No—it’s good. Strong food will give you dreams tonight, because you have a sanguine nature. Perhaps your dream of a laurel wreath at Fontaine-de-Vaucluse arose from the spiced sausage you ate that day,” he said slyly. “Giacomo di Colonna thinks Laura is a fabrication, a play on the word laurel. But you know the truth of it. By predicting a laurel crown for my poetry, you caused me to fall in love with her.”

  Could this be true? Had I not only foreseen but also caused their meeting?

  He said, “Can you imagine how I felt when I met a great beauty with such a name? You were there at that blessed moment, Solange, as much a part of it as I was.”

  As Francesco lifted me down from the sarcophagus, his knee pushed the fabric of my robe between my legs and I consoled myself that Laura, for all her spiritual power, would never hold him between her thighs. A jealous husband kept them well apart. Perhaps I was mad, for I still loved Francesco after all his deception.

  He held out the rest of the pie. At any moment, he might massage my throat
to slide it down and I was just the silly goose to let him. “Does this mean you will return to the Cheval Blanc with me?” I asked. “That is, if you are not afraid of being seen entering and leaving.”

  In answer, he folded my stall to sling it over his shoulder. All along the moat, men were filling sacks with gravel to stop the rising water. If the Rhône rose much higher, it would push the moat’s water upstream to flood the Sorgue canal. Once we were in my chamber, Conmère dove at me, babbling in the old tongue. She ate the remains of the eel pie, then curled up near the hearth, while Francesco observed her keenly. She muttered a charm at him, then some blasphemy, then ran howling back to Perrette’s room.

  “What did she say to you?” Francesco asked.

  “Very little of sense. She becomes disturbed whenever the full moon causes the Rhône to flood.” I shivered and tucked my hands into my sleeves.

  “Perhaps you feel the same disturbance. After all, you have her blood and bones.”

  “I thought you despised such superstition. However, I will admit that my fingers and toes are prickling.” I drew up my sleeve. “Look at this gooseflesh.”

  “Lie on that blanket near the fire.” He sat behind me, my head upon his lap, and dipped his fingers into a bowl of fragrant oil. “My nurse used to ease my childhood fears this way. Let yourself go into a trance.”

  “I suppose you need a poem for Cardinal Colonna’s table.”

  A short pause, then an honest answer. “He wants one his music master can set to music.” His thumbs, slightly abrasive, circled towards my temples. “Let me guide you into the space behind your eyes.”

  His fingers travelled across my cheeks, my chin, my throat, then loosened the neckline of my robe to rub my shoulders and collarbones, quickening all my senses. The motion of his hands reminded me that we had not lain together for one hundred days. I felt the easy curve in the back of my neck and down my spine and tried to descend into the miasma that foretold a fit. I knew he was feeding off the excitement. He wanted to milk me of my deepest thoughts, musical phrases he might turn into poems, but the ripe, oily fragrance of my skin was distracting us. Soon my robe was gone and we were entirely together—only his shirt flapping between us—and Francesco was uttering long, hard syllables of pleasure.

  When at last we separated, I fell into a heavy weight of brain and limb and woke much later in a wild heat with my arm close to the glowing embers. All was confusion until I realized Francesco lay entwined with me. What seemed to be his leg was actually mine and what felt like my arm was his arm weighing me down. My writing stall was open beside him, with the ink-horn unstoppered.

  “Did I say anything in my delirium?”

  He rolled over to look at a sheet of parchment. “I wrote down everything you said, but I’m not sure I can make sense of these scratchings.”

  “Just do not turn this into a poem about Laura.”

  His breath became laboured, an audible in and out, as if there were miniature workings inside his head that meshed like verge and foliot to create unspeakable complexities of thought.

  “Laura is the subject I have been given, Solange.” He spoke gently, trying to make me understand. “While I was reading your copy of Dante’s Vita Nuova, I began to comprehend that the figure of Beatrice held the book together. Now that I have found Laura, she will give unity to all our scattered verses. They will become a song cycle—the canzoniere of Francesco di Petrarca de Florentia. We have twenty good poems now and with your help I will soon have twenty more.”

  His hand plunged into his shirt, somewhere in the region of his heart, where a bulge rumpled the cloth. He dug it out: a white glove, trimmed with gold and stained with a man’s sweaty longing. Between us, all this rare afternoon, had lain this small, impermeable barrier.

  “It began with this,” he said. “Laura’s glove.”

  Should I laugh, or cry out in anger? “How long have you been carrying that?”

  “Since the day sacred to poetry, the sixth of April in the year 1327.”

  I had seen him pick up the gloves myself in the church of Saint Clare. He must have kept one. All this time, he had been clinging to this fragment of her like a saint’s relic, whereas I had given him my whole self readily, pawning myself for scraps of intimacy. What did I have left to offer? Nothing but ideas for his poetry.

  Well, now I had one. “Write a sonnet in which you return the filthy object to her. Write it this instant, Francesco di Petrarca de Florentia, or I will do it for you and deliver it to Laura de Sade myself.”

  Twenty-one

  O BELLA MAN, che mi destringi ’l core, e ’n poco spatio la mia vita chiudi. What bitter irony! I had taunted Francesco into writing a stunning poem about my rival’s bare hand. O beautiful hand that squeezes my heart, that grips and rules my life. Skin of ivory, fingers of Orient pearl—he had outdone himself. When he brought the poem for me to copy, he could not thank me enough.

  Cardinal Colonna’s music master wrote a melody for the poem and Francesco reported that, when it was sung at the cardinal’s table, the young men stood up to clap. Afterwards, when the young men met women from Avignon’s scant supply, they begged a glove and promised eternal obeisance in the style of Petrarca. Even the city courtesans could sing the lines from O bella man. I heard them myself as they strutted with their gloves pinned to their belts to show off their bare fingers. Encountering youths on the street, they hailed them as petrarchinos and challenged them to write sonnets in praise of their naked hands.

  Francesco’s skill with words was now established and the myth of Laura grew with each new poem. All of Avignon knew Francesco was paying court to her, but she was so pale in character that few guessed her identity. Little was known about her except that her husband kept her cloistered and only permitted her to go out attended by her women, who ensured that both lady and poet obeyed the code.

  Then Cardinal Colonna chose Francesco as an envoy who could write elegant reports for the cardinal to share with his allies. Something blessed happened: the poems about Laura stopped, and Francesco wrote spirited letters to me instead, full of lively reflections concerning his travels in the north. On his return, he sent a message to say he had been relegated, once again, to civilizing the cardinal’s boisterous young men, a numbing task more suited to a chaperon than a man of letters.

  On the following day, I set up my stall at the crossroads at which five alleys converged on the place des Études, where Francesco had told me he would bring one of his pupils. I often worked there because the university guilds-men were more hospitable than the leather-workers, who seldom ventured there. The students sat in the dust listening to their masters in the amphitheatre formed by the stone buildings. They had learnt to like a female scribe who knew the ancient authors better than they did and brought me their rented books, which Luc and I copied in tandem. I wrote on the right page with my left hand and Luc wrote on the left, our elbows bumping in the middle unless we kept exact time. Our work was not careful, but it put meat in our stomachs.

  Today, the sun was drying the ink too fast. A pestilence had driven the beggars mad, turning them into animals that scratched scales of flesh from their arms. An afflicted man ran past us naked, howling for rain as he dodged the refuse pitched by the scholars. They were listening to the spiritual Franciscan Louis de Montpellier, whose razor-sharp Latin ricocheted off the buildings, travelling straight over the heads of most of the dust-sitters. The students dipped their bread in oil, picked nits out of one another’s hair—anything to relieve the tedium of listening to the lecturer. Today their ignorance kept them safe, for with Pope John ninety years old and in failing health, this Franciscan was striking out with deadly rhetoric.

  I saw Gherardo working his way through the crowd, a head taller than most of the men. He often hung about my stall to see if any gamesome students needed help reading the more salacious Latin authors. Sometimes Guido Sette came as well, but today Gherardo had brought Francesco, along with the youth Francesco was tutoring. Both wore the
white columns of the Colonnas and the low-slung great belts known as zonas. Francesco’s was a bauble compared with the youth’s, which was inlaid from tongue to buckle with enamelled medallions.

  The youth threw a pamphlet onto my stall. “Copy this and do not overcharge.” He left with Gherardo trailing him in a familiar way.

  “Agapito Colonna—the cardinal’s nephew and his kin in temper.” Francesco was leaning against the wall beside me, posing as a client not a friend.

  “This is Virgil’s fourth eclogue,” I said, surprised. “Luc, I will copy this one myself. Why don’t you solicit work from the hospitaliers instead. Will your pupil comprehend it, Francesco?”

  “I think not, but I must try to teach him anyway.” He was now listening to Louis de Montpellier. “The man’s thesis is inflammatory. Less is more—a heretical position given that Pope John is a known glutton and excessively fond of his vineyards.”

  “Before you arrived, he was claiming that the peste was caused by the Pope’s persecution of the spirituals. It is rash to talk about it here. Can we meet in the Two Ravens later? It has been too long since we have seen each other.”

  He shifted position so his back was towards me. I guessed that his pride was smarting beneath the Colonna badge, which was too much like livery to suit him. He had left the supervision of his pupil to Gherardo, who was idling near the Colonna nephew. As they talked, Gherardo placed his arm over the boy’s shoulder, a compliment the nubile lad seemed to enjoy. He thumbed the edge of his blade like a child eager for battle. Then Gherardo drew his own weapon, likely a rental from the rue des Fourbisseurs, to illustrate some point of swordsmanship.

  “See over there, behind the orator—a lurking guardsman, one of the papal guard,” I said. “It shouldn’t take long for him to pin some heresy on Louis de Montpellier. The man is begging to be apprehended.”

  However, the guardsman was not attending to the Latin. Instead, he was cocking his head, his falcon nose-protector shoved up on his forehead, as if he was struggling to recall where he had seen me. In profile, he was unmistakable, one of the men who had tried to corner me in the Jewry after I had predicted the Pope’s downfall. Then he spotted Gherardo, no doubt recognizing him from that day as well. If Francesco hung about much longer, the Falcon might remember where he had seen the three of us together.