by Mary Novik
“Let us send for the doctor,” I said.
“And have all seven arrive? Better to let him rest than to listen to the physicians argue over how to treat him.” He retrieved his sword and inserted it into the mouth of the scabbard. “It will pass shortly,” he said, “with or without the doctors’ physic.”
“What causes such a fit?”
“There are seven theories, one from each doctor. A growth inside, or gravel, or sweating sickness, or the French pox. It comes on when he cannot rule the nobles, or win a debate, or bed a woman. It always happens on the first night with a new niece.” He jiggled his sword up and down in its sheath to make his point.
So there had been other nieces, which explained why the Pope’s servants were so adept with pillows and wines and savouries.
De Besse drew his sword half-way out and sighted down the blade. “Tell no one about this seizure. If it is known, a crisis of faith will ensue.”
The implication was clear. If I told, I would die of something quick and sharp. The sword clinked back into the scabbard and Clement’s lips moved soundlessly to call me to him. His face was less flushed and his breathing more regular.
“There is no need to speak. I will not reveal your secret.” I ran my hand across his brow, a stroke that silenced him and caused his eyes to water. I straightened his cassock and lay beside him, spreading the same fur to cover us both.
Thirty-three
A FEW DAYS LATER, the Pope summoned me. I climbed the first flight of stairs with fear and the second with intention. At the turning, a small window gave onto the Pope’s garden, where his ménagerie was kept, and I saw the Barbary lion. This fragile insight led me upwards, for I could not go backwards to the Cheval Blanc. There were one hundred steps from my chamber at the base of the tour de l’Étude to Clement’s bedchamber in the tour du Pape, the most heavily fortified tower in the palace. From now on, I learnt, I must climb to him. When all his wooing was done, and all his love made apparent that first month, Clement had wooed me not as the Pope, but as a man. I lay in his arms with equal pleasure, for I was no more a saint than was any other woman, and more than a twelve-month had passed since I had lain with Guido.
Over the summer, the number of Italians in the Curia shrank. On Saint Matthew’s Eve, Pope Clement created eleven new cardinals, only one of them Italian. Each kissed the Pope on the mouth and received a sapphire ring. The Pope’s brother, three cousins, and two uncles were elevated, and another uncle became archbishop of the richest see in France. With nepotism in such favour, I hoped to reunite with my son, and sought out Guido in the thicket of papal functionaries, where his talent was commending him. But as much as he tried, he could not hurry my petition to reclaim Giovanni. It lay so deeply buried that we must wait for due process to unearth it.
As the nights grew into autumn, so did my eagerness to return to the Pope’s bedchamber, where it was always summer. Musicians played new compositions, the fireplace radiated heat, and guests had their pick of liquors and sweetmeats. Clement sat propped up on the papal bed and his officers stood to conduct business or sat beside him to converse more privately. The prelates whispered to me, stroked my garments, laughed at my wit, admired me with their eyes, as I advanced towards the Pope, who savoured me through his men’s appetites. At a finger’s snap, the prelates withdrew.
Only Clement’s watchdog, Nicolas de Besse, remained with us. This was not the time to ask the Pope about my petition for my son. Nor did I wish to, for another niece would be eager to rest her head upon the ermine pillow. Since the papal bed was too short for us to stretch out fully, we embraced sitting up, then turned sideways to pleasure one another. His desire keen and quickly satisfied, his manners courtly, Clement was always regretful to dismiss me to my chamber. As I left, his stewards rushed in to sit him up, for the Pope must sleep upright in case God called him in the night.
In that first winter, I dreamt of Giovanni running towards me, reached for him, and woke, my arms empty. At first light, my steward carried in a round loaf, fragrant with coarse salt. I broke off lavish chunks to dip in oil from the Pope’s own olive trees. Since I must bear life without my son, why not bear it in luxury? When Giovanni returned to me, we would live here together, wanting for nothing. In the Cheval Blanc, cold and hunger would have been my companions. Here, I could enjoy a man’s touch again—after all, I was hair and flesh and bone, such parts as other women were made of. And I had an education better than most men’s, which Clement did not find offensive.
I had won the librarian’s trust by repairing damaged books, which I read greedily, and was already commissioning works myself. After the library, my favourite room was the hall Clement had dedicated to the new sciences, where the hourglass and the calendar ruled men, not the book of hours. Today, few men of science were in attendance, since it was Mardi gras. I found Clement with the court astrologer, who had been working on a map of the heavens based on his astrolabe sightings in an attempt to explain the misalignment of the planets.
“Tonight,” the astrologer was saying, “the sky will be darkened by a supernatural event.”
If this was true, it would explain why the Rhône was surging, which might result in crop failure and famine for the people. A cardinal’s skullcap bobbed towards us. Hugues Roger, snapping some parchment impatiently as he bounded to Clement’s side. Being the papal whip had made his temper vile. He had none of the polish schooled into Clement in Paris, where he had been a familiar of the King. Their voices clashed, one ebony, the other ivory, then Hugues Roger lunged at me to thrust the letter beneath my nose.
“Is this written by Francesco Petrarch?”
The handwriting was crabbed and tight, and utterly familiar. Francesco had made no effort to disguise his authorship. It would be dangerous for me to lie. “It is his penmanship and style,” I admitted.
“This is a foul attack on the Pope, my brother.”
The Pope was not as hasty. “It is so clothed in superfluity, Hugues, that we cannot decipher what it means.”
Hugues Roger snapped the letter under my nose again. “What does all this rhetoric signify?”
The Latin was hard going while my thoughts were jangling. “He composes in this elevated way when he feels strongly.”
“Was it written to you?”
I looked at it and discarded the notion with relief. “It is not addressed to anyone.”
Hugues Roger smacked his mozzetta against his thigh and put it back on crooked.
“I told you, Hugues,” Clement said. “She does not correspond with Petrarch.”
Hugues Roger’s finger poked at the sheet in my hand. “Who is this unyielding star?”
“Cardinal Colonna, who leads the Italians.”
“Yes, yes—I see that now.” He was angry at himself for missing it. “And the nodding oarsmen?”
“The new French cardinals,” I said. “Remos agunt inexperti. Like all Italians, Petrarch distrusts the French.”
“Why does he uncork such vitriol?”
“A sense of duty to the papacy.”
“By condemning the head of the Christian church? Calling my brother the sick, blind captain of a capsizing boat? How did he discover Clement’s malady—tell me, how?”
I looked at the letter again. “He refers to an abstract malady, uxoriousness. He accuses His Holiness of being too fond of his new consort. This flesh-eating fish likely refers to me. Petrarch fears I am devouring the Pope, who suffers from excessive love.”
“A dog-fish,” mused Hugues Roger, trying to locate the phrase with a dirty thumbnail.
Clement appeared satisfied. “Now I will take you into my confidence, Vicomtesse,” he said. “Rumours of my last illness flew beyond the palace and letters arrived from abbesses, nobles, and royal heirs to promote their candidates for the next pope. Such rumours threaten to break my grip upon the Holy See, but I know they do not come from you. You have proven your loyalty and I shall prove mine. From this day, you will be rectrix of the papal Comtat, and
any man”—he transfixed his brother with a forthright glare—“who questions your rôle in my household will be a mortal enemy.”
A rectrix—why not? An empty title, but better than some of the names the papal officers were calling me. Clement tucked my hand into the crease of his arm and led me across the hall to see what new physic the surgeon Jean de Parme had underway. De Parme was slithering to the summit over the other palace doctors, a snail climbing over the shells of other snails. Lately he had persuaded Clement to try treatments that made me uneasy. De Parme had strapped a patient to a chair today and laid a carpenter’s brace and trepan-bit on a nearby tripod. The surgeon told us that the man suffered from fits similar to the Pope’s. The man’s head was immobilized by wooden cross-bars, his hair was shaved, and the sections of his scalp were identified with Greek letters.
De Parme pointed at the sections one by one. “This area controls the liver, this one controls the spleen, this one the gall bladder, and this the lungs. Each organ is the seat of one of the four humours: sanguinity, choler, melancholia, and phlegm. In this skull, the four are so out of balance that the vapours have built up excessively.” He tapped the patient’s cranium to locate the thinnest bone. Then he blew on the trepan, pushed it into the skull to anchor it, as a carpenter would push it into wood, and began to drill into the bone. The trepan whined and a cloud of bone dust took to the air with a putrid odour. “This will relieve the pressure that causes the swelling.”
Clement asked, “Does the man feel any pain?”
“Not at all, Your Holiness. This bone is less than two deniers thick.” The bit perforated the skull and de Parme lifted the trepan, flicking it with a finger to show how hot it was. “That hiss is the vapours escaping. Now he will be free of seizures.” The patient emitted a muffled, strangled noise. “See how the poor man feels the good of it immediately?”
A peculiar fluid oozed from the wound and I tried to turn the Pope away. “Clement, the man has been drugged. Give me your word you will not allow this Parme to work his arts on you.”
Clement was too fascinated to be drawn off. He was soon hard in conversation with the surgeon and would be for some time. On a night like this, the Pope would not invite me to sup at his table. I would have only the company of books and the crushing loneliness of the dark, papal citadel. When I returned to my quarters, I found a new steward, with a freshly shaved tonsure, arranging dates in a pyramid on a silver salver. It was Gherardo, with skin as yellowed as a capon’s. Several teeth had rotted since I last set eyes upon him. He picked up a gold goblet, weighed it in his hand, and put it down.
“How did you get in here, Gherardo? You are no palace servant.”
“No, Solange. But then, you are no countess from Turenne.” His mouth split into a grin.
This was true, and should Gherardo reveal that I was from the Cheval Blanc, better known as a stew than a tavern, I would be at worse risk than he was. Clement had asked few questions about my origins. There was a league of comfort between a tavern scribe and the Pope’s prophet—a comfort I had become accustomed to.
“What news have you brought me of my son? Where is he?”
Gherardo extracted a date from the pyramid, causing the others to tumble. “I would tell you if I knew. Francesco still won’t let me near Giovanni. I am too vulgar for his son.”
We had that in common. I thought of the dog-fish in Francesco’s letter. “That letter about the blind captain of a listing ship—did you bring it to the palace?”
He spat out the date stone, and helped himself to wine. “Francesco told me to deliver it.”
“So Francesco wants the Pope to read his jeremiads! I should have guessed.”
“Bibamus papaliter,” he toasted, sucking back the Pope’s good Beaune.
Let us drink like a pope. With drink, Gherardo would become malleable, and I might learn something of use from him. Indeed, he was already waxing philosophical, his trouble spilling like sewage from an open sluice. He spread himself across the table, face buried in his arms.
“You cannot know what love is, Solange. It claws a man’s chest, ripping skin from him like the peste.”
I poured myself a goblet of wine and sat on a chair beside him. His tears were real, for they were dampening the table at an alarming rate. He told me that he still loved Cardinal Colonna’s nephew, who had just been made a bishop and was living in the palais. Gherardo had bribed a servant for his livery jacket and hunted down the Colonna youth in the labyrinth. One night of love was all Gherardo wanted, but the nephew had called him a sodomite and threatened to summon the guards. Gherardo had been truer to his noble lover than his lover had been to him. He was not yet stone, for tears could not flow from a senseless object.
“Francesco wants me to live with him in his Vaucluse retreat so the country air will cure me of my liking for boys, but I would go mad there. He avoids Avignon, calling it a sty and a sink, and digs the soil like a peasant. He is writing a secret dialogue between a sinner named Petrarch and Saint Augustine in which the saint wins all the arguments.”
My breath came out in a rush. “So he has stopped writing sonnets to Laura?”
A soulful burp. “You could as soon talk a rabid dog out of its foaming. It is ink for his quill.”
“At least he is celibate.”
“But his mind is wanton.” Gherardo dug inside his shirt for some crushed papers. “I brought these for you. Checco wants your opinion of these poems, though he won’t lower himself to ask. Look at this one—he craves Laura’s company at night. And this—full of self-loathing, as though he had been intimate with her. I suspect that, between these two poems, Laura finally weakened and invited him into her bed.”
This was such folly I did not bother to refute it. I spread the poems across the table. They were autograph drafts, so far advanced in art that I almost forgave Laura for inspiring them. I could taste my lover’s sweet mouth, feel olive fingers mapping the bones beneath my skin. The pain of longing for Francesco returned. Why had I squandered love when it was mine?
Gherardo could not be stopped. “It is not just Laura who haunts him. Now that you are the sheath for the papal sword, he’s lusting for you again. His quill has become his phallus. He bloats up until he’s purple, then flagellates himself in overwrought concetti. He’d be better off bedding a boy to give us all some peace.”
His tongue had lost none of its sulphur. Why did I let him work me like this? “Gherardo, remember where you are.”
“In the chamber of the Pope’s niece.” The smile of a palace gargoyle. “Yes, dear sister, I know very well where I am. In the fortress of the Avignon popes. Watch yourself, for it is rumoured that the last niece died from eating ground emeralds stirred into her food.”
It was not the first time I had heard such harrowing tales. We were both quiet for a moment. “What will you do?” I asked.
The scar whitened across his cheekbone. “Only one person can help me now.”
Did he mean himself, or me? I studied the dregs in my goblet, considering how to get him out of Avignon for my own sake as well as his, for he endangered us both.
The bells for compline had rung some time ago. The palace was emptying of human noise, since tonight most of the prelates were attending Mardi gras fêtes in the city. The servants would soon be gone as well, for it was useless to forbid them the ancient right to celebrate carnival. By now, the astrologer would have progressed up the tour de la Campane with his astrolabe and map of the constellations. Clement and his counsellors would take seats on the roof, where they would witness the metaphysical event and argue over its meaning in Latin. I would have enjoyed the speculation, but Clement had not sent one of the Limousin guards to fetch me. I had spent much time alone of late. Perhaps his taste for me was souring, because I had not had a vision since his coronation.
My chamber door was swinging closed. I put my head into the stairwell, my voice echoing, “Gherardo, where are you going?”
“To the dyers’ quarter. If you hav
e the courage to escape from this mausoleum, come dance with me along the rue du Cheval Blanc as we did last year.”
Thirty-four
THE PALACE WATCH did not challenge me, even though I was without my customary escort. Clement had become a benign tyrant, a grand seigneur who forbade me to go outside the palais on my own, but it was Shrovetide, when anything might happen, and the guards opened the double portcullis for a coin. Although I had no lantern to hold up, the moon was full and I knew the streets and byways better than anyone.
The alleys were seething with dark forms surging towards the twelve gates in the old city wall. I liked slipping my leash and walking amongst the folk once more. I felt the force of the mob as I headed towards the rue du Cheval Blanc, where I had agreed to meet Gherardo. The gates were guarded after curfew, but the guards were common yeomen. Tonight, they were drinking liberally and turned bleary eyes on the slurry of humanity issuing out of the city. Only those foolish enough to carry lanterns, as was the law, were marked down in the record book for the city marshal’s inspection.
The canal was full, the water skimming over the top onto the marshy ground. Here in this sublunary realm, where the Pope could not enforce his curfew, a dark power welled up. There were no men of science, no dissectors of the truth, only peasants illuminated by the fickle moon. The folk were bent on enjoying themselves before being shriven on Ash Wednesday for the forty days of fasting. A vast fire was already burning and the fête du quartier was underway, a black sabbath by the looks of it, for a pig was boiling in its grease and more animals were tethered. There would be a mass-bouffe and a few sacrifices before pointed sticks would fish the boiled pig-meat out of its cauldron.
Drummers and acrobats led the dancers along the rue du Cheval Blanc. Ahead, I saw Gherardo, back in his own clothes with a wineskin fastened to his lips. The harlots had come out of the Cheval Blanc to enjoy the fête. Here, also, were liveried servants, who stood out against the dull backdrop of peasants, churlish apprentices, and dyers who could not afford to wear the purple that stained their own arms. Few of the people had bothered with masks and in the half-shadow, half-light I might be one of them again. I caught up to Gherardo to ask for a turn at the skin. Our talk of Francesco and my lost son had depressed my spirits. Tonight I felt like escaping into the world these people inhabited, but Gherardo refused to give me any drink. Instead, he handed the wineskin to a mountebank as they staggered off together, arms linked, into a passage.