by Mary Novik
But whoever was in the palanquin, it was certainly not the new Pope, Pierre Roger, for he was riding a white mule led by the dukes of Normandy and Burgundy. The Pope was escorted to Saint Peter’s chair, the high seneschal of Provence emerged from the barge to kiss the Pope’s slipper, and the people roared their approval of this pageant. One ritual speech followed another until the head of the conclave, the Gascon Raymond Guillaume des Farges, held up the gold tiara embedded with a massive carbuncle. He lowered the crown upon the Holy Father’s head and arranged the lappets on his neck.
Having stood through all these Latin tributes in the heat, I was perspiring. The dukes and dauphins were kissing the new Fisherman’s ring. After them would file viscounts, noblemen, and knights, and those who defied the sumptuary laws to pass as such, each paying homage with the hand-kiss, the baisemain. I had now had my fill of seigneurs and sovereign princes with their heraldry and reeking perfume. Once they had moved forwards, I must fall in behind to get to the Pope before the men of arts. I wanted to stay well ahead of Francesco so he would not see me.
My temples ached and my elaborate robe was sticking to my skin. The only woman in the line of noble vassals, I progressed in increments towards Saint Peter’s chair, until at last the Pope loomed on the dais, smiling genially as if we were kindred spirits in our outsized costumes. He looked like a Limousin farmer, with a broad forehead and jaw planted with a crop of stubble. Rattled by the heat, I lurched towards him, fell heavily on my knees on the dais, and dropped my petition in his lap. Immediately, some functionary’s arm stretched out to toss it into a basket with a multitude of others. I tried to steady myself by staring at the Pope, but the sun was in my eyes and everything had shunted out of kilter. Was the Pope peering at me, or was I peering at him?
He held out his gloved hand so I could kiss the colossal ring. “My dear, there is no need to kiss my feet. Although I am God on earth, I am a mere servant to beauty.”
The cardinals, archbishops, and bishops laughed uneasily and the Pope smiled an elongated, lopsided smile. As my lips neared the Fisherman’s ring, a blinding ray of sun threaded through his tiara, skewered the red carbuncle, and stabbed my eyes. The tiara split into three, each crowning a separate head. The middle spoke Provençal, the left Italian, and the right Latin, all striving to be heard over the others. Even more disturbing, the voices were all mine. I was babbling nonsense, the worst kind of prophetic nonsense about God crowning the Pope with Pentecostal flames. How long did I talk? I did not know—long enough to irritate the men lined up behind me, but at least I had not spoken in the old tongue. A petition whistled past my ear. Another grazed the Pope’s cheek, flung by one of the disgruntled friars marooned behind the men of arts.
The Pope lifted his hand, his fingers tight as soldiers, to calm the multitude. “This prophet has spoken fair. We have witnessed God’s fire, the tongues of flame that blessed the apostles at the first Pentecost. My predecessor did not know how to be pope, but you will find me overflowing with generosity. I have decided to be called Clement, the sixth pope of that name, and will be full of clemency towards my people.” The applause rose, then subsided. “No man who seeks a favour will leave my city empty-handed as long as he observes the rule of law!”
The cardinals knelt hastily in vassalage, the dignitaries scrambled to make obeisance, and Francesco was borne forwards in a wave of literati as eager as the sweaty friars to glimpse the Pope and his new prophet. Francesco could see me kneeling at the Pope’s feet and he seemed agitated, as if recalling his warning that one day my riddling tongue might be torn out in the Pope’s dungeon. I tried to stand, but my legs were too weak to hold my weight, and the Pope signalled the Limousin guards to remove me from the dais. As they bore me off, I heard some of the cardinals seizing upon my vision of divine flames as a providential sign, and as the guards carried me past the French allies, I heard the opinion amplified into an anthem of praise for their new pope.
Thirty-two
I WOKE IN A mute black space. Perhaps a torture chamber. Rolling on my side punished me with a seasick belly and a stab of pain behind my eyes. I felt for my miséricorde and found it still hidden in my belt, where I had ready access to it. A gaunt man drew the curtains that hemmed me in. So I was in a bed. He introduced himself: Gasbert des Sept-Fontaines, a médecin sent by the Pope. The chamber was small but well furnished, with a single window, too small to climb through, and a single door, blocked by two of the Pope’s elite guards. A jail, then. But a comfortable one.
My mouth tasted metallic. “Is His Holiness displeased with me?”
Sept-Fontaines widened his eyes. “Why would he be? Yesterday you brought the nobles to their feet, the cardinals to their knees, and spoke three languages more fluently than his brother speaks his native tongue. Like a wise sibyl, you were enigmatic. Each man has taken what he wished from it. The French are proclaiming that your prophecy legitimizes Clement VI’s right to the throne and the Italians are spitting bile because it encourages the Holy Father to reside here instead of Rome.”
Sept-Fontaines bled me, funnelled tasteless fluids down my throat, and spooned in jellied pap, talking all the while. From him, I learnt that two hundred casks of wine had been drunk at the coronation banquet. The Pope’s guests had devoured a hundred cattle, a thousand sheep, five hundred pints of red sauce and five hundred of green, and finished off with fifty thousand tarts. I had missed it all and so had this médecin, who had drawn the short straw of tending to me.
“Am I in the Dominican friary?”
“In the Pope’s palace, at the base of the tour de l’Étude. The Pope’s Limousin guards carried you themselves. Mary of Egypt could not have been more tenderly transported.”
Hours later, my laboured sleep was broken by two women jabbering in the same accent as the guards. An old voice, brittle and unpleasant, and a soft, youthful one. I peeked at robes trimmed in ermine and sable, outlawed to all but members of the court. The clementine roses on their sleeves were red, unlike mine, which were white. How could I have made such a mistake? I shut my eyelids and pretended to be asleep.
“Aliénor, look at that hair,” said the younger woman. “As abundant and shiny as a chestnut. Who can she be?”
Aliénor rustled off my blanket to finger my robe. “This is English wool, but she looks more like a city harlot. She should be taken to the repenties of the Magdalene and confined there.”
“Could she be the woman rumoured to be Francesco Petrarch’s sister? Observe how strange and tranquil her face is. Do you suppose she is having a vision?”
“Let us find out. Visionaries do not bleed.”
As a needle pierced my toe, I breathed into my back, willing myself to take the pain. I concentrated on the mattress, which was tufted and springy. Feathers, not horsehair. What were they doing now? Staring at my foot?
“No blood,” the younger said.
Gasbert des Sept-Fontaines entered, followed by shuffling servants and the aroma of roast game. “What is this—a conclave? Leave us, for the Pope has sent a haunch of venison from his own table to enrich her blood.” The women swept out. “You may open your eyes. The jackals have gone.”
“Are they the Pope’s kinfolk?”
“A sister and a niece, although many of the palace women called kin are really courtesans. As you will learn, beds in the palace are more for entertaining than for sleeping. Only the Pope seems to know who is blood and who is water.”
Two days after the feast of Saint Jean, the servants took my garments, and returned them cleaned and brushed. Just as they had finished putting the final layer of clothing on me, a brutal knock sounded—the captain of the palace to collect me, Aigrefeuille by name, his armour studded with three stars. Had I been gowned for public show or for the pillory? The captain escorted me into the labyrinth of corridors, up staircases, and through long halls linked by massive towers. In every chamber stood hostiarii—guards, stewards, doorkeepers, ushers—in papal livery. We emerged in an antechamber weighed down
by late-day gloom, where Pope Clement sat in the only chair amongst a cadre of his officers, their faces grim and sceptical. An inquisition, then.
A fur-lined cloak appeared with an old dignitary buried inside. The camerlengo, I guessed, from the chain that snaked around his neck. His voice was formal, pitched to the corners of the chamber, where men with dark faces and darker clothing lurked. “You are familiar with Francesco Petrarch?”
What did this mean? I did not rush to answer.
He spoke louder. “Are you a member of his family?”
Beside me, the captain muttered, “Is he blind? Can that hair grow on an Italian head?”
The camerlengo persisted for the Pope’s benefit, since he was observing me attentively. “I ask you again, are you Petrarch’s sister?” His hand went up, down, right, like a lazy man crossing himself.
I took one breath, another. “I am not.”
“So we surmised.” He scored his point in the air.
“But she is clairvoyante,” said the Pope. “That is no deception.”
The camerlengo bowed. “Your Holiness, her vision at your coronation is not in doubt. It is God’s choice of instrument we question. Why such a woman?”
The captain spoke, impatient to get on with it. “You have been seen at Petrarch’s side in the city.”
“Carrying his quills and parchment, yes. I was his copyist for a time.” At the vulgar laughter from the rougher men, I looked at the Pope, appealing to his gallantry. “Is that an offence in Avignon?”
“There is no charge against you,” the Pope said, his eyes leaping from man to man. “Did any one of you say otherwise?”
Several of the Pope’s officers looked down. Whatever they knew—and I feared the worst—they were reluctant to air it in front of Clement VI.
Another man resumed the interrogation. From his accent, coat of arms, and new marshal’s cloak, I knew the speaker to be Hugues Roger, the Pope’s brother. His jaw wide, his hair like wind-blown straw, he had the same coarse features as the Pope but none of the Pope’s courtesy. “Cardinal Colonna recalled Petrarch from Rome. What was the reason?”
“So he could attend Pope Clement’s coronation, I presume,” I said. “I have not spoken to him since his return.”
“Do not dodge! How do the Italians intend to use Petrarch? What is his rôle as poet laureate? Surely you can speculate on that.”
“Give her time, Hugues.” The Pope rose from his chair. “My brother means, should we be wary of Petrarch, my dear?”
I considered. “You have a poet, Your Holiness, by the name of Jean La Porte. At your coronation, he was dressed as opulently as Francesco Petrarch was. I understand he has already written a tribute to glorify my vision of the flames descending at your coronation. Petrarch plays the same rôle, but on the Italian side.”
Hugues Roger kicked a screen beside me, making me jump. “You mince words. Is he a poet or a threat?”
“More of a threat because he is a poet,” I said. “The Italians will employ his eloquence to persuade the Pope to return the Holy See to Rome. But surely you expected that, Your Holiness.”
The Pope acknowledged this. “What if I offer him a priory in Pisa? Will he take himself there?”
“He might, for he is a man of honour. However, he can write diatribes from Tuscany and might write more frankly there.”
“This is true prophecy!” The Pope threw out his arms, compelling his officers’ agreement. “This woman was sent for a purpose. See how she wears the clementine roses upon her robe, but in white, a more saintly colour?”
They would soon discover, if they hadn’t already, that my relationship to Francesco had been more intimate. “Your Holiness, may I approach?” I spoke for his ears only. “I have a son, Giovanni. I have petitioned you to have him recognized in law. I pray that you will grant me my request.”
The Pope’s hand swept the men away. “Leave us. All of you. Now.” At this sharpening of his tone, the officers scattered for the door. “Hugues, you must go as well.”
The others left, but his brother whistled hollowly and landed on one of the window seats with a thud. “You cannot be left alone now that you are Pope. Your safety is in my charge as city marshal.”
“Hugues,” the Pope said in exasperation, “I believe you would suspect the Magdalene herself!” Steering me towards another window seat, he inquired, “Whose son is it, my dear?”
“I was betrothed to Francesco Petrarch. In my allegiance to him, I bore his child, but he abducted my son and cast me aside. As a femme seule, I put myself in your hands, Your Holiness. If you help me to regain my child, I will repay you with my loyalty.” The softness in my voice said more, as his softness had invited.
Hugues Roger stood, knocking dried mud from his riding boots onto the painted tiles. “Why should he trust you?”
The Pope forestalled him with the hand that bore the enormous ring. “I will do all I can for your child without making a foe of Petrarch. That I will never do, for his voice carries to men of letters across Europe. Hugues, get your men to find her a title, something that restores the dignity this poet stripped from her.”
Hugues Roger’s boots sounded through the next chamber and the Pope slid closer on the window seat. “Now, describe for me—how do these blessed visions come to you, my dear?”
“With a speed that catapults me into a deep void. They arrive in pain, and when they go, I remember little of them. This can scarcely be called a blessing, Your Holiness.”
“Visions come from God, the most clear-seeing of all.”
“If they do, He sends them for you, not me.”
This earned me a smile. “Then you will have them and I will interpret them. What is a Pope without a prophet by his side?”
Eight days went by before I saw Clement VI again. I was saying vespers when he entered my chamber, followed by a dozen armed canons wearing long cassocks and pectoral crosses. Behind them followed the old camerlengo, out of breath and in ill humour, and hiding both poorly. My maids retreated, their eyes lingering on the parade of men. Apparently, the Pope had begun to say the office in the chapel, when he changed his mind and forced the canons to bump down the flights of stairs after him with all the holy paraphernalia.
I rose, but the Pope waved me back to my prie-Dieu. “Since you were not in chapel, I came to join you in your prayers.” He listened to me chant the final psalm, which his canons duly repeated. “Why do you say vespers by yourself?”
I stood to greet him. “I have no church to say them in.”
“You must use my chapel—were you not told as much?” He snapped his head round to command his men. “Where is the camerlengo?”
Today the camerlengo was buried in a different cloak, a syrup-yellow lined with fox. “As the vicomtesse de Turenne”—he crossed himself hastily—“you are the Pope’s niece, with access to his private chambers. Sleeves are being embroidered for you with the Turenne arms.”
The Pope said, “You chanted the psalm from memory. But even if you have mastered the psalms, you need a psalter. Give her mine.”
One of the canons relinquished a magnificent psalter with reluctance. Pope Clement was staring at me in a more than pleasant fashion. Suddenly, he flipped his hand, communicating an order to the camerlengo.
The camerlengo said, “Out, out—only one needs stay as guard. A table chaplain, someone discreet. Nicolas, you.”
On his scabbard, the youth displayed the de Besse arms, a branch of the Pope’s family. His hand rested on his sword hilt, twitching slightly. I had no doubt he would be fast, if necessary. I turned a few pages of the psalter, catching the scent of wild irises, then laid it on my bed. “I know the value of your gift, Holy Father, because I was trained as a scribe at the Benedictine abbey where I was raised.”
“We have that in common,” he said affably, “for I was a child oblate at Chaise-Dieu. I might from time to time offer you my company, if you are willing.”
I dipped my forehead in agreement, since it was n
ot a question. He had disrupted vespers to seek me out, forcing his canons to troop down the tower stairs en masse. While I was so high in his thoughts, there might be time to strike a bargain. I was in for a denier, why not a sou? “When I am not needed by Your Holiness,” I suggested, “I might be of some use in the library.”
He embraced the idea. “Daily, we acquire books by right of spoil that have to be restored. As well, you may commission new books to refresh my ears at the close of day. Perhaps you will read to me even now?”
A thin book appeared from a fold of his cassock. It was a fine rendering of the Song of Songs, which he was pleased to show me sitting beside me on my bed. Bed-coverings of fur arrived and sweet wine with trays of delicacies. Nicolas de Besse kicked a hassock into a corner to slouch on and the camerlengo bowed himself towards the door without turning his back upon his sovereign.
The Pope read his favourite verses, his voice a nightingale’s building to a tremor. His robes were scented with balsam and lemon. And his breath—had he been chewing frankincense? Next, it was my turn to read to him, marvelling that I was closer to the Pope’s ear than any of his kindred. I felt a surge of power, then something more sensual. What was it worth to touch a pope?
Gentle and patient, he was in no rush to enjoy me, but at last, his hand caressed my waist with a determined pressure. His were the arms I must fall into, and I found them sweet and welcoming. All of a sudden, his face flushed and his breathing quickened. Then the book fell and so did he, a heavy suffocating weight across my chest. In one blow, my ribcage flattened and the air in my lungs was forcibly expelled. A sword clattered on the tiles and Nicolas de Besse was there, rolling Clement off me. De Besse laid him on his back to loosen the jewelled pin at his throat. His face enflamed, his torso quiet, Clement scarcely seemed alive.