by Mary Novik
In summer, we found an orphaned crow in the garden. We mothered it, kept it warm in a woolly box, and dripped milk down a ribbon into its beak. Soon it was tottering about our chamber like a drunk bishop. When Félicité released the crow in the garden, one of Clement’s nephews caught its wings and pinned them under his feet. Félicité tossed a rock at him to make him stop, but hit the gargoyle on the Pope’s fountain instead, chipping its ugly flaring nostrils. As a result, the children had to appear before Clement in the audience chamber, who chose to make an amusing example of them to the day’s petitioners. Félicité was crying, for she was not yet four—too young to tell a genial Pope from a harsh one.
The boy chorister, who was twice her age, argued his own case against her. “Your Holiness, this girl is a sorcière like her mother. That crow is her familiar. So are the rocks, for she commanded them to take to the air to attack me.”
The ingenuity of this delighted Clement, who called his nephew to his knee to rub his hair, then forbade Félicité from entering the papal garden. As he gave his judgement, he scrutinized her tearful face, since I had allowed him few glimpses of her over the years. Was he looking for Francesco’s features, or plotting a betrothal between the nephew and Félicité? To secure titles and lands, Clement had made alliances between even younger children. When my daughter returned to me, I pushed her head into my skirts and ran her from the chamber.
I knew what he had seen. At birth, Félicité’s hair had been a papal gold like Clement’s, but it had now darkened. Her skin was cream skimmed from the top of milk, deepening towards olive as each day passed. I started to wash her complexion with almond and her hair with camomile, which only made her eyes look blacker. Her maid began to comment on her appearance. Before long, our servants would whisper that a swarthy man had fathered my child, perhaps an Italian. Someone—the camerlengo, the French allies—would delve into Clement’s past, and unearth a series of mistresses without children. They would conclude the Pope was sterile and accuse me of whoring with another man. Clement would be forced to discard me. I might be jailed in a tower like Saint Barbara, or roasted in the hot baths like Saint Cecilia. And what would become of my sweet daughter?
In late autumn, the wind vibrated the waxed membranes over our windows and our door rattled. I woke one night to discover Félicité sitting up in bed beside me, chewing on the corner of her blanket because she thought that the nephews were breaking down the door. She huddled next to me until first light, picking apart the wool of her blanket while I read to her from our bestiary. She had never seen a pasture, or a sheep, or an old woman carding and spinning wool. The only animals she knew were the monkeys, lion, camel, and the other exotic beasts in the Pope’s ménagerie, which was now denied to her. That day, I knelt to the Virgin to implore her aid, then boiled a root of Our Lady’s Candle together with a small destroying angel to make a numbing potion. On this night, All Saints’ Eve, there would be merrymaking by the folk and my servants would not return until daybreak. Félicité and I ate a simple meal: a roasted beet, stewed celery stalks, and a basted fowl. Then I poured the potion into her goblet with the serpent handle.
“We will be sorcerers together,” I told her. “Drink this, and when your maid returns, you will have disappeared.”
Instead of drinking, she snapped my miséricorde out of my belt tongue to admire how neatly the ivory pieces fit together to disguise the weapon. “Will I need your secret knife?”
“No, my sweet. You will be safe where you are going.”
“What are the words?” She asked this question each time she looked at the phrase carved into the ivory.
“Amor vincit omnia. Love conquers all.” I held out the goblet and her small hands gripped the serpent.
“Will it hurt, Maman?”
“No more than a fever. This tastes sweetly of honey.”
She stirred after nocturns, breaking out into a sweat. I sponged her, then nestled her in my arms, rocking her to comfort us both. When her tremors worsened, I waited for her heart to slow. It was now safe to send for the old surgeon Jean de Parme, since he could do nothing to help her. Félicité was lying quietly in my arms when he arrived. Seeing the pain written on my face, he squeezed my shoulder to console me. Just as he bent to examine Félicité, she went into a spasm in my arms and he moved back. Then she fell motionless. He pronounced her dead of a putrid fever, because of her clammy skin and cloying breath, and ordered me to bury her at once. He scuffled away, afraid to touch her. My daughter’s face was the colour of béchamel. So was mine, for I had truly gone through hell and could no longer stifle the violence of my sobs.
I bundled Félicité’s tiny corpse into the contagion shroud I had made ready. The night watch raised the portcullis hastily, crossed themselves, and retreated in fear. I carried her through the dark alleys to the priory of the Poor Clares, where I laid her gently beneath the ancient Virgin in their church. I spared only a glance for the wooden Magdalene weeping at the foot of Christ, for I did not wish to be seen. If I took shelter here with Félicité, as my heart counselled, or lingered to weep over her even for an hour, I would endanger both of us. I removed the contagion cross from her shroud and loosened the top to reveal her sweet face. Inside the shroud, where I had told the prioress to look for it, I placed a purse with gold florins sufficient for an oblate’s dowry.
Thirty-nine
ON ALL SAINTS’ DAY, I knelt in Saint Martial’s diminutive chapel to pray for my daughter, my eyes fixed upon Martial’s soul being borne upwards by two angels towards the azur d’Allemagne heaven that Giovannetti had just painted. Even though the tapers had melted into a lump of wax, Clement was still dry-eyed, as if Félicité’s death had solved a problem he was struggling with. The choir-master sang a lachrymosa—a single syllable hammered to vibrating gold wire, then another, then another. The boy choristers opened their lungs, their voices clean and pure, their hearts genuinely heavy, and then the brief service was over.
At midnight, when Clement had fallen asleep, I left his bedchamber by the circular staircase hidden in the wall. I was not returning to my own chamber, as usual, but leaving the palace by the postern gate, the one the servants used. When I reached the priory of the Poor Clares, I sought out the prioress, who was waiting for me. She had discovered Félicité in the church before prime as I had arranged. The shroud had kept Félicité warm and the potion had worn off, doing her no harm. She had been sitting up with the gold florins in her hand, waiting to give them to the prioress, as we had planned. Now fed and fondled, Félicité was asleep in her bed in the lay dormitory. She had died to danger and been reborn to safety. My tears in the chapel had been crocodile, for I would never have harmed my beloved child.
Before giving Félicité the potion in the serpent cup, I had told her, “You must be brave. We will play a trick on the palace by pretending you are dead. When you wake, you will be in a sheltered place with kindly nuns.”
“Yes, Maman, it will be a good joke. We will be sorcerers together. Only, let me play with some new children, for I am tired of the Pope’s nephews.”
Now the prioress took me through the cloister and up the staircase to the dormitory, where I found Félicité in bed. After I had knelt to thank the Blessed Virgin for her aid, I tickled Félicité’s nose with a feather.
She stood on the bed and leapt into my arms. “Maman! I knew the serpent would protect me.”
My voice stumbled as I explained that the priory must now be her home. Her eyes stood out like coals and her hair stuck up like thistledown.
“What ails your throat, Maman?”
“Only a little frog.”
“Fais vite, let him jump out!” She pushed on my cheeks to expel the poor creature.
She was a wise little girl, older than her years, and knew there had been much to fear in the palace. She led the way into the garden in her night shoes. Here, under the fallen leaves, she showed me the late-bearing strawberry plants and picked the berry she had saved for me. When the bells rang for
nocturns, we watched the Poor Clares walk in pairs past us to the church. Although they belonged to the Franciscan Order of Poor Ladies, their fine brown habits were trimmed in fur. The gossip trickled down the column as their eyes assessed me: a well-made robe without blazons, a silver belt with a carved ivory tongue. A merchant’s wife who had borne a child in disgrace? Was she visiting at such an hour to evade her husband? As the prioress passed, she tapped my arm and laid her finger across her lips. My secret would be secure with the Clarisses.
Félicité and I listened to the psalms, then her soft hands clung to me as I took my leave. We kissed eyes, noses, ears, and mouths. She remembered her vow to be brave, saying, “Only, come again soon, Maman, and we will whisper in the night.”
In the priory of the Poor Clares, Félicité became as nocturnal as a black-eyed owl, sleeping only an owl’s sleep until I arrived from the palace to wake her. She fell happily from high to low estate for she was a sanguine child. Remembering how I had loved Clairefontaine, I asked that she perform small chores. Soon she had a plot of frost-bitten earth where she could sow poppies in the spring. Before long, she had a friend. The Poor Clares called Anne-Prospère la petite misère because she was of phlegmatic humour, but she was as welcoming a companion for Félicité as Elisabeth had been for me. Anne-Prospère told me that her father disliked her, so her mother had given her to the nuns to keep her out of his sight. In the day, when I yearned for Félicité’s hand in mine, I took solace that I was not the only mother who had chosen the priory as an asylum for her daughter.
After the frescoes of Saint Martial’s life were finished and the chapel had been dedicated, Clement turned his attention to the beatification of another of his favourites, Yves de Bretagne. It was soon after Yves had been canonized—for the devil’s advocate failed to vilify him in the canonization hearing—that a letter arrived for the vicomtesse de Turenne, palais des Papes, Avignon. A pilgrim riding hard from the south who sought urgent audience with the Pope had carried it. I recognized Gherardo’s bold hand at once.
My dear Countess,
I write to you as one much changed, whose day is filled with labour and singing the offices faithfully to Our Lord.
I have found refuge in this harsh order, with its fierce rule of silence. Here, our hands do the work of our mouths. I have prayed and slept and eaten in my solitary hermitage. I have worked in the fields until I have collapsed in exhaustion. Can you imagine how difficult this silence has been for me, for whom talking is life? I came to crave the offices of the day, when we opened our mouths to sing, more to one another than to God. My nostrils hungered for the censer, hungered for the sulphurous wick of a candle, hungered for the pungent smell of love denied.
For four years, I did not touch the flesh of another man except the novice I shaved. I caressed his head like a lover, learning every bump in his skull (and which body part it controlled) as if it were my own. I admired his ear as a sinner does the orifice of his confessor. When I was done, he shaved me, prolonging the exquisite torture. We spoke only with our fingers, yet this was the deepest love that I have ever known. When finally my hands strayed into forbidden paths, he could tell no one, since his mouth was stopped by vows.
For we were now monks. I had foresworn my past life (so far as it could be foresworn by one such as I) and had embarked on the long, penitential route up the mountain when the atra mors came north to punish us. The tale came to us through a sailor begging confession, who had been in Messina harbour when a plague ship arrived from the Crimea groaning with the dead and dying. His merchantman set sail on the next tide, putting in to Toulon with a diseased crew. He travelled north by land, to seek shelter with us at Montrieux. He was the devil’s man, for his tongue and urine were black. Near his genitals was a lump like an apple, and rotten eggs lurked in his armpits. He died spitting poisonous blood into the prior’s ear.
Two days later, the prior died in my arms and I carried him on my back to his grave. Soon there were more monks struck down than monks to tend them. When there were only three left, we shrove one another, then dug a pit large enough for three. We tied a rope to a sling filled with earth and ran it through a pulley, so that it needed only tugging to release its cargo into the pit. We made a vow that the last one to die would climb in alive and tug the rope, to join his brethren under the rich, autumnal earth.
When the first man died, we dumped him in the gaping hole. We slept in one bed, unshaven. When my lover died, I dragged his body to the pit to roll it over the edge. I released the goat, the sheep, and our milking cow to forage in the fields and walked naked to my grave. I was not depressed in spirits, for my life had come to a just end. I climbed into the pit, lay down on top of my bloated, stinking brothers, and reached for the rope to drop the cradle of earth upon my head. The monastery dog sat by the grave, observing me with alarm.
To say that a vision stayed my hand would be an act of pride. Visions are granted only to the pure of heart like you, Solange. But for the first time in two score years, I thought of another first, myself second.
If I died, who would feed Fidèle? In his stupid loyalty, he would squat by my grave until he died of thirst. I climbed out and filled a kneading tub with water from the well. With Fidèle at my heels, I dragged it to the grave and climbed back in. He sat on his haunches, cocking his head at me, his tail wagging at this game. I lay down on my deathbed and closed my eyes to enjoy the blessed repose.
I could hear Fidèle’s soft, red tongue lapping the water. My hand reached for the rope, then hesitated. I had only postponed his death. Now he would die of slow starvation, not of thirst. It flashed upon me that his wagging tail must be a Sign. I did not quibble that the medium was an unlikely one for God to use, for this Sign was followed by a Voice.
“Get up, Gherardo,” the Voice commanded. “You will not get out of work so easily this time. Get up, you lazy beast, to feed your hound. Your field needs tilling. Gather your livestock back into the fold and run this priory by yourself!”
And so I did, taking the quick, easy way out of my grave by scrambling up the steepest bank. I did not want to give God time to change His mind.
I tilled that field and another. Since then, God has vouchsafed to me poor wanderers, bereft in soul and body, speaking foreign tongues, who have walked over the hills to escape the plague cities. Here they have found a home, digging and hoeing in return for my vast stores of wine and foodstuffs.
I must go now and perform lauds in my out-of-tune way, for Fidèle and I keep the Carthusian offices here. He is all men to me and I all dogs to him. I would not trade him for the noble wolfhound that was once the pride of Cardinal Colonna. We have made a pact to die as brethren, but I trust that God will keep us alive until He has exacted a just measure of industry from me.
Beware, dear Countess, of sailors bearing tales from Toulon, for the plague is coming north.
A servant of God in Montrieux-le-Jeune.
Vacate et videte quoniam ego sum Deus.
The pilgrim carrying Gherardo’s letter brought others addressed to Pope Clement VI that told a similar story. I listened in apprehension as the pilgrim begged the Pope to pray for his own city, Aix, and to open the gates to all the refugees toiling on foot or by ox-cart towards Avignon. Panic rode before them, for they were said to be travelling under a plague-cloud of biblical dimensions that was advancing one league a day. Even now, the lookouts on the palace towers thought they could see, to the south, the black sirocco carrying the plague towards us.
Just before Epiphany in the year 1348, Clement sat in his half-finished audience chamber, listening to cases and portents about the plague. In my chair beside him, I anchored my tongue, for too much prophecy was already in the air. Every delegate was allowed to speak in turn, both rich and poor. A nobleman complained that his cask of wine had turned to vinegar. A beggar displayed the miraculous blood spots on his tattered cloak. A savant spoke of auguries in flood and famine and proclaimed that the eclipse had been a portent of the horror now trav
elling northwards. A village priest swore that the plague was God’s punishment for wickedness. Avarice, lust, gluttony—he rhymed off the court’s sins, including the Pope’s incest with his niece. Had this simple man read the eclogues Francesco was writing from Italy, in which the Pope appeared as a drunkard and the cardinals as goats?
As the corps of refugees trudged closer, the citizens demanded that the gates be barred, but Clement was adamant that his city would house all those who sought its shelter. I was visiting Félicité inside the Poor Clares’ priory one night when the gatekeeper alerted me that the first refugees, more than two hundred strong, had stepped on the rue du Cheval Blanc. I left quickly, keeping ahead of the migrants as they dragged themselves, cowls pulled over their foreheads, up the rue de la Curaterie, then the rue allant du Puits des bœufs, driving fear before them until they reached the papal square. I was too late to get back into the palace, since the guardsmen, in their breastplates and polished helms, had formed a human barrier to prevent the migrants from entering. Their march halted, the men threw their robes into a heap, lit the fire, and circled the smoking mess, beating their naked flesh with tails of rope.