by Mary Novik
I seized his arm. “Did you bring them with you?”
“Why would I?” He shrugged. “He is also writing eclogues about the Pope milking his flock to glut his treasury and anonymous letters in which he calls you Semiramis, the sultan’s consort, whose stallion has hooves of gold.”
I suppose the bargain was a fair one—furious new writings in exchange for the infant I had taken from Francesco without his knowledge. But hooves of gold? “When you next write, tell him I am with child by the Pope. Let us see what he can make of that.”
“So that is why …” He gestured at my belly. “You are dancing at knifepoint, Solange. What if the Pope objects?”
I asked myself the same question as a knight escorted me into the banquet hall, where I took my place at the Pope’s left. Clement had not yet noticed my condition, but if Guido had observed that my garments were snug, so might others. Clement and I cleansed our fingers with rosewater and ate generously of the roast meats, only to discover there would be two more courses. In the first intermezzo, the Pope was given a battle-horse worth four hundred florins. In the second intermezzo, he received a sapphire ring and one of topaz. My clothing shrank course by course, until, after nine flights of dishes, divided into threes by intermezzos, the chef quickstepped out with his thirty cooks in time to our handclaps.
When this debauchery of ear, eye, and stomach was over, Cardinal Ceccano escorted us to a gallery with a view of the meadow. Ceccano’s knights showed us their prowess in close combat and youths sparred with long-swords, while marriageable young women paraded in their heraldic sleeves. Ceccano leaned over the Pope’s shoulder, rounding his back to share a lewd observation, although I was within hearing. I straightened, spreading my fingers boldly across my thickening belly. Catching on, Ceccano swerved his eyes from me to the Pope and back to me again, attempting to stir up enmity between us.
“Petrarch was right,” said Ceccano. “This courtesan has cast a spell of uxoriousness that keeps you besotted in your Babylon.”
“Indeed she has.” Clement’s face went soft, no doubt sizing up my roundness, counting the months, recalling the times I had come to his bedchamber of my own volition. He gestured towards my fecund belly, raising his voice for others to hear. “See how I send out shoots in spring? In this year of the eclipse, this is proof that the Pope is well rooted in the soil of Avignon.”
He kissed me full upon the lips, as he did when appointing a cardinal, then removed his sapphire ring to place it on my finger, a deliberate insult to his host, who had just presented it to him. This was so remarkable a show that the French cardinals stomped their heels, drumming their approval.
“Now, Ceccano, listen to your pope. Your palace is fine, but mine shall be finer. I shall turn Avignon into Nova Roma, a queen armed mightily against her foes. She will have a new jewel in her tiara, a magnificent palace with an audience chamber of such surpassing size and luxury that no man will ever again question whether the Pope will remain in Avignon.”
Annibal Ceccano was simmering. “For my next entertainment, Your Holiness”—he pointed across the meadow to a tableau that was assembling—“I have invited the masters of your city guilds to attend the evening’s revels. As a mark of courtesy, I have erected a bridge across the Sorgue to shorten their way.”
We watched as the guild-masters dismounted, adjusted the hang of their festival robes, and manœuvred into their proper rank and order. When the bridge was overburdened with human flesh—two dozen guild-masters bowing towards the Holy Father—it let out a thunder-crack and gave way. The bridge twisted sideways, broke into two, and dumped the worthy burghers in the river. This was no bridge of merit made from seasoned wood, but a sham—a manifest folly that Ceccano had built expressly to deceive and he laughed coarsely while the victims paddled like dogs to the bank. They had come by no harm, yet I felt for their damaged pride and ruined linen, since it was an unkind way to make sport. Fattened by the banquet, despoilt and fawned over, Clement was also laughing, though more weakly than his host.
But then he stopped. Abruptly, his hand lifted and fell, signalling the termination of the revels. Silence radiated outwards from his throne: first the cardinals stilled, then the bishops, then the musicians, then the young noblewomen and the youths, who sheathed their nimble swords with scarcely any clatter. The bastide, even the birds above it, fell ominously silent, for when the Pope rested, so must all his vassals.
I was shown to a bedchamber decorated with sinister magpies and delicate clementine roses. A sickening beat sounded on a tabor as Clement entered like a bridegroom in an escort of cardinals and lackeys. Thankfully, Clement had as little stomach for this jockeying as I did. His palm flipped to dismiss the men. The servants removed my stiff outer garment and we were left to share a bed but little else, for we were too ill with ceremony for more.
At dawn, a heavy fist attacked the door. Nicolas de Besse leapt from his pallet beside our bed, shot open the bolt, and Hugues Roger banged in, announcing, “A body has washed up against the weir.”
Clement threw his legs over the side of the bed and dropped his head between his knees. “Not one of my cardinals?”
“A guild-master who pitched into the river when the bridge collapsed. He became entangled in his heavy robes and drowned.” Hugues Roger marched around the great chamber, cutting the edges of his turns sharply. “The guild-masters are blaming the Pope. The cursed Italians have tricked you into falling out with your own confraternities.”
I rose from the bed. “Your Holiness, you need those guilds to construct your palace.”
Hugues Roger halted in front of his brother. “This is well said. If they band against you, they will strangle the construction of the new wings.”
I said, “Give all the masters a length of fine cloth to replace their spoilt robes, along with some furs above their station for their wives.”
“That may salve their humiliation, but not mine.” Clement lifted his head. “I have been caught in the snare of my own vanity. Where is the corpse?”
“Our Limousin knights have dragged him to a borie. After he is stripped of his clothing, he will be buried like a serf.”
“No,” said Clement. “Tell the knights to claim his body honourably. The man must be paid every homage, the best wax candles, the whitest shroud. Not in Avignon, where too much notice might incite rebellion, but in Ceccano’s new chapel, where this misadventure belongs. Give Ceccano my instructions, then hasten to the widow to tell her yourself, most gently. Do not bribe her, Hugues, but with charm and plain speaking, do all that can be accomplished. I will ride to the city in penance. Arrange for thirteen paupers to be at the eastern gate, so I can kneel to wash their feet before I enter.”
The brothers clasped hands—one ebony, the other ivory. Then Hugues Roger strode out, as full of purpose as his brother. Clement called for his steward to dress him and I withdrew into the antechamber, where all my gluttony came up into a pail a servant held for me—one course after another, until all nine had made an appearance. The girl whisked away the pail before the smell of it made me retch up my very guts.
Dressed in a simple priest’s cassock, Clement mounted his white mule to ride the straightest route to Avignon, with as many dignitaries as could be persuaded to follow him. There was no upholstered barge with canopy to glorify our progress. As we neared the city wall, we learnt that the guild-masters had passed this way earlier, crest-fallen, wet, and in ill humour.
People were congregating outside the porte des Infirmières, their mood hostile, their behaviour truculent. Whipped into a sense of general injustice, they had come to witness the Pope’s penitential return. Someone pushed an ass in front of the Pope with a sign saying, Make me a cardinal too. Troublemakers pelted us with petitions wrapped around rocks, then with rocks alone, and then anything hard within arm’s reach. When the Pope’s guards fell behind, a prankster smacked the white mule on the rump, causing it to bray, but Clement kept his seat, and once the folk were close enough to see his f
ace, as dusty and streaked with sweat as theirs, they let him pass without harm.
But I was different. Even in a modest surcot, my hair covered by a wimple, I was taunted crudely. Some shouted la Popessa and some la poule. Ahead, dangling from a gibbet, was an effigy—manifestly big with child—gowned in a scarlet robe. The effigy’s towering coiffure was a mockery of mine at Ceccano’s banquet. But at least I had not been strung up in the flesh. I hoped that Clement had not seen the coarse placard slung around her neck, Whore of Babylon. Petrarch’s words had a habit of spurting through this city like flames through hollow straws.
My guard retreated, the mob howled, and the lane became a mass of jumping flesh. A sow galloped between the legs of my palfrey, causing her to shy. A bucket of slops flung from an upper window splashed over me. At last, someone acted. The papal almoner trotted up on a squat grey pony to scatter coins, which cleared the mob out of my path. One of my guards climbed to the effigy to cut it down and the rest chased down the three worst troublemakers, then dragged them into the crossing, where the points of daggers prodded them to confess. With the heat of the steel at their backs, they would not be long about it.
I spurred my mount forwards to close the gap between the Pope and me. Ahead, just inside the gate, stood the thirteen paupers, clad in their own rags, their feet and toenails filthy. Even at four paces, they had a ferocious smell, but Clement did not buckle. I heard him confess as he inclined his forehead, “I am a sinner amongst sinners.” If any man would bear God’s yoke, he would. He climbed from his mule without assistance, knelt before the paupers, and reached for the sponge to bathe their feet with his bare hands.
Thirty-eight
I ALSO WAS FEELING the heat at my back. Believing in my own powers, I had flown too close to the sun and been singed. I sought out Hugues Roger to ask what had become of the prisoners, wanting to forgive them and thereby gain forgiveness for my own excess. He took me to Renaud de Pons, master of the palace jail. His skin thorny and his breath foul, he was from hide to hair a complete villain. He whistled a cheery hornpipe as he walked us to the torture chamber. The knaves had been tortured to extract confessions, then killed because they had nothing to say. The leader had been dismembered first. His head, limbs, trunk, and bagged entrails sat in a river of blood, waiting to be nailed to the city gates to warn against further treason.
I pressed my forehead against the wall to blind myself. “Even if they made that effigy, it was no more than I deserved for my pride.”
De Pons snorted. “Do you want them to hang you from a gibbet?”
Hugues Roger guided me into the corridor, away from the butchery. “Henceforth, you must stay within the palace.”
“I would rather have the freedom of the city.”
For once, he did not growl at me. “Any attempt on you is, ipso facto, an attempt on the Pope. He is most secure inside the tour du Pape. That Florentine ambassador is spreading scandal about the counterfeit bridge—le pont postiche, he calls it—that dumped the guild-masters in the river. His confrère Francesco Petrarch has learnt that you are carrying Clement’s child and is dipping his pen in vitriol again.”
“At least my loyalty to Clement is no longer in doubt.”
His jaw twisted. “No, I’ll give you that. You’ve managed to convince my brother that the child is his. I will move you into the family apartments, where you will be better protected.”
My garments and jewels weighed on me like winter livery. What I most wanted was to choose my own companions, to go into the city at will, to buy my own goods in the marketplace. But that was not possible, and as long as Clement believed my child was his, she would be safe—and so would I.
My daughter quickened on the eightieth day, the day her soul entered her body. Fœtus animatus. In bed with Clement, I shifted his hand to my belly, but he could not feel the life inside. He now spent more time with his master mason than with me. His plans for the new wings were being translated to stone: firm, white blocks from the best quarries. As the tour de la Garde-robe rose, the Italian opposition grew. Every piece of masonry, every stone and nail, every fortification, was an insult to the Romans. Jean de Louvres and Matteo Giovannetti were imported to direct the work, but the hundreds of men who dragged the blocks on sledges, dressed them with mallet and chisel, then winched them into place were from our seven parishes, and soon Clement was easing back into their favour.
In the étuves at the base of the new tower, my sweat mingled with Clement’s in the aromatic steam. This caldarium was Clement’s idea and he sat next to me, counting the age marks I had cut into my thigh.
“Why did you stop at seventeen?”
Because I met Francesco. But I could not tell Clement that.
“This looks like a chalice,” he said, touching my birthmark. “You have borne one son and will bear another. Your new son will be a citizen by right of birth. When he is fifteen, I will appoint him bishop of the city.”
I felt a flat-footed blow inside my womb—the kick of a girl, not a boy. I moved his hand and this time he could feel it. “And if God chooses to give us a daughter?”
“I will make her a dynastic marriage. I was once betrothed myself. As a young clerk, I fell in love and fancied myself a troubadour. However, I could not get the girl with child, so her father voided the agreement and took his daughter back. That was when I espoused the church instead. Soon I was an impetuous young monk at the University of Paris, as sterile as a mule.” He gave me time to apprehend his meaning—that he knew he hadn’t got me with child—then tapped my belly. “I assume this one is Petrarch’s as well. I approved his petition to legitimize your son since Petrarch is a thorn in my side and it will hasten his departure. Does he know he fathered this second child?”
“No.” At least I could be honest about this.
“It must be kept that way. I do not object to being thought the father, for there is no greater fool in Avignon than a prelate who cannot get a courtesan with child. But if you divulge the truth, prophet that you are, countess that you are not, I must cast you out.”
He took me—in the heat and sweat of the caldarium, my back against the lead bathing tub, my eyes fixed on the clementine rose sculpted in the vaulting—more roughly than he had ever done. I had risked his affection and my life for a moment’s pleasure in his library and could not gamble on his forgiveness another time.
In the days ahead, Clement toiled at his sermons in his new study, soothed by his two gardens, the one outside his window and the woodland fresco painted inside to remind him of his Limousin birthplace. When his sermons were too plain to suit his ear, he asked me to bring books from the library so he could steal from others, even Petrarch, to feather his texts with borrowed plumage. And now, more of Francesco’s writings were coming to light, in which he did not spare the Pope. In a new sonnet, he preached that From this impious Babylon from whence all shame has fled, I too have fled to save my life. It was as if each man wanted to be the other, for as Francesco’s poems soared into sermons about the cardinals’ vices, the Pope’s sermons slipped indecently into rhyme.
Félicité slid from me easily, embracing her destiny without complaint. The astrologer cast her horoscope, pronouncing her birth auspicious. Mighty planets, he told the Pope, had contested at her engendering. Her little heart beat wildly beneath my fingers, two beats for every one of mine. I kissed her fontanelle, and vowed to guard her better than I had her brother. One day, I hoped, we would both take up residence on our lands at Turenne, where the wind blew free of clerics’ perfume.
Clement presided at my daughter’s baptism in the small chapel, twelve royal feet by twelve royal feet, which jutted like a pious afterthought from the banqueting hall. A few canons attended, a few boy choristers, but it was no ceremony to speak of. Clement looked tolerantly at Félicité until she shrieked on being dunked into the font. My servant rushed her away and her cries diminished down the corridor. Behind me, the sound of velvet creeping against velvet: the niece with the tight brown curls,
who had added ermine to her wrists and throat. In the boil of women in the palace, she was rising to the top like scum, eager to interpose herself between the Pope and me. Instead of following my child as I wished, I went to Clement, who was running his hand over the new coat of plaster.
“I must choose a subject for the frescoes,” he said. “Matteo Giovannetti is ready to paint this chapel.”
“Why not dedicate it to Saint Martial to rival Ceccano’s chapel at Gentilly,” I suggested, knowing he had a soft spot for French saints. “He was a Limousin like you, and if Saint Peter is pictured giving Martial his rod, it will vindicate the Pope’s residence in Avignon.”
He allowed himself a smile. “Your advice is both timely and political.”
“You could be the model for him.” I ran my hand across his stubble. “Yours is the chin of a saint, especially with those black hairs on it.”
He caught my hand and held it tightly. “Your laughter echoes in these stark corridors. I have missed you at my side, Countess.”
With each day, I found new ways to stay there. Although Clement had washed the paupers’ feet, he was still smarting, for reports of papal luxury were migrating along the trade routes of Europe. In penance, he pledged to increase the supply of grain to the Pignotte, and within six months the almshouse was giving away twenty thousand loaves a day. Even so, Clement’s banquets did not cease, for he did not want the dignitaries to take their appetites to enemy tables. The number of men residing in the palace grew to four hundred, four hundred and fifty, five hundred. Women navigated the corridors in garments with ties and clasps that served no purpose except to delight the eye. Their provenance as murky as my own, they crept into antechambers and forged alliances in bed. Even the new camerlengo left his door ajar to view the palace nieces, his counting board heaped with the wealth of spoil from prelates too spiritual to father heirs.
Before long, Félicité was begging words from me as other children begged sweetmeats, and thus she grew clever but thin, strong inside but frail outside. Each night she fell asleep in my arms, tickling her nose with a feather until her hand fell quiet. In the day, I mended rare books and commissioned new ones, parcelling out the gatherings to the scribes. To be near Félicité, I often worked in my chamber, where we listened to the steady chinking of the masons’ chisels outside. One by one, the old buildings were demolished, the rock was levelled, and the workmen shouldered away the debris in paniers. As the new wing rose, stone by chiselled stone, Félicité learnt to recognize each man by his hat and girth and named him in a child’s fashion. Dust, mud, noise, and blocks of limestone—she re-enacted each day’s labour with pebbles and sticks inside our chamber. I now lived two lives, one as Clement’s consort and one in the labyrinth where I raised my daughter. The less seen of Félicité, the better. Although I kept her away from the public chambers, I took her frequently to the Pope’s ménagerie to feed the animals.