Muse

by Mary Novik

  He left to follow the Pope, who was progressing towards the antechamber in his band of officers. Clement’s force spent, he had simply let me go. I was not surprised to discover that he loved Avignon more than he loved me. He would be safe here, with his iron chancellors, waging his war against the peste. I would make it easy for him. I did not chase after, but took a last look towards the library, where I still had projects underway.

  I walked slowly and thought fast. I had no friends to aid me. I could not turn to Guido, for any alliance thus revealed would injure him. If I got through the double portcullis, the guards would hunt me down until they snared me in an inn or tavern. I would be tossed into the torture chamber, where even the Pope’s fondness could not save me from his jailer’s gusto for extracting limbs from sockets. No man would lower his eyes as my soul passed out of me. If by chance I escaped the net being dragged for me, the folk would clutch at me, begging me to defend them from contagion. I could never wander freely on the streets of Avignon. Once they recognized me, they would yank my clothing from me, piece by holy piece, then tear out the hairs on my head, my nails, until I was stripped of every token that could be used to stave off the plague.

  At last, this tortured thinking blew me into harbour. I had a duty to stay alive to protect Félicité. Martyrdom would save no one and would certainly give me no pleasure. In my bedchamber, my maids were already pawing my garments. While they were gossiping over my state robes and fur-lined cloaks, fancying them theirs, I put a few things into the alms-bag at my waist. I pointed myself towards the latrine tower as if answering the call of nature, but darted, instead, into the garde-robe, where visiting prelates left their outerwear, along with bribes for the officers. I drew a red cape from a hook and put it on. The cardinal who had hung it there had also left his chapeau rouge, which would shade my face from scrutiny. I lacked the spurred boots, but the bribe I had picked up—a fat partridge in its cage—was genuine. I walked purposefully, judging the best direction.

  As soon as Aigrefeuille realized I had bolted, he would ring the alarm and bar the gates. The drums would sound, two long, two short, until every guardsman was deployed. To the north, a huddle of guards were already laying siege to the latrines. A guardsman ran past me with a pole-axe to break through the wooden door. When they found the sanctuary empty, they would assume that I had dropped into the pit that contained the excrement below. They would soon be occupied with throwing dice to decide who had the odious job of lowering a rope to slide down it.

  That is, unless they noticed something odd about the cardinal now strolling through the Grand Tinel, or heard a discordant note, for the partridge was becoming restless. I climbed into one of the window seats with a view of the garden and unlatched the cage to release the partridge from the window. The bird plummeted, remembering its wings only moments before it hit the saffron crocuses. First one cook came out of the kitchen to puzzle over the squawking bird, then the others followed, then the cooking boys, wiping greasy hands on their tunics.

  While they were chasing after the partridge, the kitchen would be empty. I ran through the dressoir, down the stewards’ passage, and into the lower kitchen, where I found the great table spread with animals being dismembered for the Pope’s next meal. I removed my outer clothes and hid them. A short flight of steps led to one of the mouths of the égout souterrain that carried the waste water directly to the Rhône. I remembered seeing its size when it was being built—large enough for a child, too small for a man. I tipped in a bucket of cooking fat to grease the drain, then slid in, head first, before I could pause to weigh my chances of making it to the river alive.

  The Vaucluse

  1348

  Forty-one

  THE WATER CHANNEL narrowed as it left the palace, then broadened into a uterine cave that swilled with kitchen waste. I grabbed on to a passing cabbage, wormy but buoyant, to keep my head above water. The channel became a chute, faster, with scarcely enough air to breathe. Then the roof disappeared and I was shooting through an open sewer towards the Rhône. Once in the river, I fought my way up through the foaming water, to meet the eyes of a bloated corpse that was eddying near the shore instead of negotiating the currents to Arles. I drifted after it beneath Saint Bénezet’s bridge, until my feet touched mud. I slithered into the vegetation to pull myself onto the bank, where several plague corpses had beached themselves near a plague fire.

  I emerged from the marsh, river-blackened and unrecognizable. A crowd was gathering around the large fire. Some ritual was in progress and I dove back into the reeds to watch unseen. A group of labourers—with iron-toed boots, with red hair, weapons-smiths to the man, for this was Saint Barbara’s stalwart band—were dragging a woman who looked like me along the tow-path. It was my maid, wearing my robe of seven reds, her saucy look wiped off by terror. I had often seen her lusting after this robe, which I had hated since Gentilly. I watched in horror as they threw her onto the fire, shouting names such as Saint Barbara, la Popessa, and worse. As the flames licked her shoes, she protested her innocence fiercely. The fire ran up the inside of her leg and I imagined the searing pain, hoping that she died before her soft white innards curdled like burnt cream. It was a high price to pay for the theft of my clothing and I pitied her from my heart. She had taken my death upon her shoulders, sparing me.

  At last, the flames died, the crowd dispersed, and the beggars sifted through the embers for charms against the plague. As I went past, holding up my collar to hide my face, some lucky fellow retrieved a hand, a choice relic from which a profit could be made. I was walking along the rue de la Balance, keeping clear of doors branded with red crosses, when a horn announced the arrival of the becchini to heap the day’s cadavers on their cart. Two servants prodded a distended corpse out of a dwelling with long sticks, while a horrible lament—pain, or grief, or both morbidly entwined—came through the open door behind them. I took the rue de la Palapharnerie du Pape, staying outside the ramparts as long as I could, then aimed south on the rue de Sainte-Clare to the priory of the Poor Clares. The gate was barred and the sacristan, the sternest of the nuns, sat as its keeper. When she did not recognize me, I collapsed against the iron grille in a wretched bundle of wet filth.

  How long had I huddled there? I heard whispers, but when I looked up, the sacristan was gone. Something dropped on me—a chunk of bread shoved through the grille-work that joined the other chunks I now noticed on my robe. The whispers turned into giggles and a tiny finger beseeched a kiss. I wept with joy at the sight of Félicité’s dark eyes. My daughter was alive and well! I kissed nine more fingers through the grille, then her nose, then the bulge of her small cheek. Soon her new friend, Anne-Prospère, was also poking her fingers through the iron webbing to beg my kisses.

  The prioress rushed towards us, gesticulating wildly, her wimple askew. “Do not touch that plague victim!” Her hand thudded on Félicité’s shoulder, then Anne-Prospère’s, propelling them back towards the cloister.

  “Grant me asylum with my beloved child,” I implored. “I am in mortal cold.”

  Only then did the prioress realize who I was. “You consigned your daughter to my priory, made me her guardian in your stead. I will not expose her to contagion by letting you enter.”

  “I am desperate for sanctuary and this is the Franciscan Order of the Poor Ladies. I am not carrying the plague, for I have been washed clean by the twice-blessed Rhône.”

  “The disease has already taken one of the nuns in my care,” she said. “I sent the servants home to their families and we are so crippled without them that we cannot even bury our own dead.”

  In her red, tearful eyes, I saw my chance. “Which of your nuns has died?”

  She wavered. “The herbalist, but no one has gone near her.”

  “With a plague corpse in your midst, you will lose more of your nuns. Such corpses are said to exhale pestilential fumes that infect the healthy. Push it out with poles and lay it here for the becchini.”

  “You will not tr
ick me into opening my gate,” she said. “Besides, she must be buried in our church as befits our order.”

  “If you take me to her body, I will bury it for you,” I bargained. “I know how it is done.”

  She turned the key in her hand hesitantly. Just as I lost hope, she fumbled it into the lock and pushed it home with a decisive clack. I got through in an instant and put some distance between me and the gate. After I had scrubbed myself in the lavatorium, the prioress let me embrace Félicité and spend a blissful hour with her in the warming house.

  Now I had to fulfil my part of the bargain. I found the dead nun in her herbarium. Several of the Clarisses huddled at the doorway, pinching their nostrils and uttering prayers. The herbalist had stripped herself naked to warn the others against touching her sores. She was so bloated that she appeared to have four breasts, two in front and two cankerous lumps in her armpits. A young woman was coming from the cloister with a shroud across her outstretched arms. By her stride and the speed of her approach, I saw she had some backbone to her. She was wearing gloves and had brought a pair for me.

  “I am Angière de Bédarrides, Anne-Prospère’s sister.”

  About twenty years of age, she was not in the brown habit and black veil of the order, but a fitted costume of patrician blue. She told me she had been visiting the priory when she heard the cry that the plague was running rampant in this quarter and chose to stay behind the grille when it came down.

  I examined the jars on the herbalist’s shelves, peering and sniffing until I found angelica water to sprinkle over the nun’s face and a bag of quicklime, which I dusted over her body. When we had positioned the shroud beside her, I lifted her shoulders and Angière lifted her ankles to roll her into it. We tied the ends and manœuvred the corpse onto a barrow to wheel it inside the shrine of Saint Clare. I adjusted to the damp, musty stone dressed by the stonemasons’ chisels, then absorbed the power of the workmanly church. Here, in this little church, Francesco had first caught sight of Laura. I let Angière go ahead while the memory, with all its bitter fruit, engulfed me. After it passed, I went into the Lady chapel, with its cracked wooden statue of the Virgin, where the Clarisses had pried up a paver with a crowbar and dug out the soil beneath. They now stood beside a shallow grave with a pile of earth heaped on the opposite side.

  While the prioress recited the words of the psalm, De profundis clamavi ad te Domine, Angière and I wheeled up the barrow and tilted it to slide the corpse into the grave. The lady nuns took up spades and shovelled in the earth like brawny ploughmen. After they left, I removed the gloves and shook out the folds of my robe. Although I was missing my Turenne sleeve, the azure fabric had cleaned up enough for the pintucks and embroidery to show.

  “You are the Countess of Turenne,” Angière said. “No one who has seen you at the Pope’s side could ever forget you. I was at Gentilly when Pope Clement gave you a sapphire ring. It was the day that my father consigned me to misery by betrothing me to the seigneur de Bédarrides.”

  The old Avignonnais did not throw their daughters away on men beneath them in station and Angière had married into a good family, as her dowry belt confirmed. I asked, “What do you mean by misery?”

  “I believe the poets, who say there is no love in marriage. The seigneur de Bédarrides is a cruel man who married me only to beget sons. I hid in this priory so he would not know that he has quickened my womb. I beg you to help me dislodge this child I am carrying. It is said that the palace women are skilled in such matters.” Her voice was firm and her forehead creased with purpose. “I can only get free of my husband if I convince him I am barren. I do not fear what needs to be done.”

  “As the Pope’s consort, I did not intend to lead young wives astray. Is there no one else to turn to? Surely your mother …”

  “She is ruled by my father. If he finds out, he will beat me, then return me to my marriage bed. The best my mother can do is give me to this convent as she did Anne-Prospère. My sister will remain cloistered all her life, yet my mother knew unimaginable love. I believe you know her: Laura de Noves.”

  That was why Angière looked familiar, for her eyes were as grey and her hair as flaxen as Laura’s. The plague had made strange bedfellows of us. This time, when the memory of Francesco rose, I did not try to quell it. “It was in this church that your mother met Francesco Petrarch on the sixth day of April in the year 1327.”

  Angière looked into the vault, taking it in. “I wondered if it was here.”

  “The day has been celebrated in the finest love poems ever written. The very moment and the very place where he beheld her perfect face.”

  “Indeed they are exquisite. I helped my mother hide them from my father. She did not bow to Petrarch’s pleading until, just as her beauty began to fade, he appeared at Pope Clement’s coronation in his poet laureate’s gown. She saw you there—voluptuous, free, desired by all men. I believe that she gave in to him then and that Anne-Prospère came from a night of love they shared soon afterwards.”

  A night of love. Had Laura finally enjoyed his fingers’ poetry upon her skin? Francesco had claimed his love for Laura was only spiritual. Why had I believed every word he uttered while we lay in one another’s arms? He had deceived himself most of all, believing the lies of his own poems.

  “Laura and I sheltered our daughters in this priory for the same reason,” I said, “for we both associate it with Francesco.”

  “Were you not his mistress before you were Pope Clement’s? My mother said you were.”

  “Félicité is also Francesco’s daughter, though she does not know it. I suppose that is why she and Anne-Prospère make such good sisters.”

  “My mother hated you for your hold over Petrarch.”

  “We have been yoked together, we three, for over two score years.”

  “I have lived under his shadow as well. My mother hired a tutor to teach me Italian so I could read his poems to her.”

  I could not believe what I had just heard. “You mean that Laura cannot read?”

  “She can neither read nor write.”

  “I’m sure that Francesco does not know it. He has written two hundred poems about her!”

  “I doubt we saw half that number. It distressed her to learn there were apologies and love words she did not see. And now, she has so lost her beauty that she is fearful of Petrarch casting eyes upon her, yet ill with wishing to see him all the same.”

  What use was beauty—especially faded beauty—if Francesco Petrarch no longer praised it? “Tell your mother she need not fear. I do not think he wishes to see either of us again.”

  “I believe she knows, for she has given up on life. She is wearied from confinements, yet my father will not stay away from her bed. The whole house is in an uproar until she lets him in. I do not wish to be bound to my husband as my mother is. Will you free me of this child I am carrying?”

  The seigneur de Bédarrides did not deserve this fine young woman. I would do what I could to help her. We returned to the herbarium, where I pulled out stoppers to smell the contents of the jars until I found the pungent wormwood I was seeking. A distillation of artemisia, its most potent form. As I poured the green oil into a vial, I splashed some on my hand.

  “Now make a solemn promise. Go home to your mother. Inform her that Francesco Petrarch has left Avignon, never to return. Tell her about the child in your belly and give her time to change your mind. Promise me that you will hear your mother out.” I waited for her to nod, then closed her fingers over the vial. I trusted Laura to find a way to free Angière from her husband without injuring her child. “The potion must only be inserted internally—do not take it any other way. Tell your mother it is poisonous by mouth, but not who gave it to you.”

  Angière tied the vial to her dowry belt with a strip of cloth. “Look after Anne-Prospère for me. It may be some time before I see her.”

  “She will be another daughter to me, even as you are. Go carefully, Angière. Stay away from the corpses la
id out for the becchini.” I kissed her brow, so much like Laura’s that it pained me.

  The gate was being keenly guarded by the gatekeeper. At the rear of the garden, a mound of earth was heaped over the fig tree’s roots to protect it from frost. From this height, I boosted Angière up the priory wall. She hung off the other side with only her fingertips showing. Once her fingers let go, I heard her feet drop softly onto the ground beneath.

  After Angière left, I took on the herbalist’s duties, consulting her herbals to remind myself how Conmère had mixed remedies. This was a way for me to prove my worth and earn sanctuary here. In spite of all our care, several died, including the sacristan and prioress. Without them, the nuns blundered through the divine offices. I no longer worried about being put out on the street since I was the only one who could lead them through the psalms. Then, just as the first shoots appeared on our almond tree, the deaths stopped.

  We kept the gate barred for our safety. In April, when the nuns had run out of spices to relieve the tedium of their cooking, Angière scaled the priory wall on a ladder held by one of her sisters. When I saw her perched on the top panting heavily, I brought a chair to ease her down, for I was glad to see she was big with child.

  Chastened by her mother’s valour, Angière had indeed changed her mind, and returned to the priory to give birth to her infant. She told me sadly of her mother’s fate. Laura had collapsed in despondency upon hearing that Petrarch had gone to Italy for good. When Angière told her mother that she wanted to dislodge the child, Laura had confiscated the vial of poison. On the third of April Laura became gravely ill and on the sixth of April she died. In her will, she gave Angière one florin and promised her to the nunnery of the Poor Clares so her husband could not get at her. Thus, two women were freed from their marriage vows. Angière told me that Laura died of the plague, but I knew that the plague did not strike a single member of a family where there were more to feed on. No—Laura had drunk the wormwood oil I had given to Angière, as I had hoped. Weary of life, Laura fell eagerly upon the vial and welcomed her release. Her death on the sixth of April—the sacred day on which Francesco had met her—told me that she had chosen to die.