by Tania Bayard
She picked up the pages and leafed through them. The duchess hadn’t said who the author was, but it was obvious he was well-to-do, and he seemed kindly enough, for he’d gone to the trouble of writing this tome for his fifteen-year-old bride, evidently an orphan who needed to learn how to manage his household. Christine pictured him sitting at his desk in a comfortable room, his young wife leaning over his shoulder as he wrote that he liked to see her dance and sing and tend the plants in her garden. Perhaps it was springtime and she had just come in bringing a bouquet of primroses and violets. He told her when to sow seeds and set out plants, and how to harvest and preserve herbs and vegetables. Or perhaps it was winter, and the couple sat in a tapestried room, close to a large fireplace where logs blazed and the flames threw light onto a crowd of embroidered ladies who seemed to glide around the room. The husband told his wife how she should care for him, especially whenever he came home from a journey, wet and cold and expecting to find his house in order and his every need attended to.
These were pretty images, and the man’s instructions were appropriate for an elderly man who’d taken a young, inexperienced bride. But there were many pages devoted to religious instruction, decorum, and humility. Apparently the young woman needed an inordinate amount of guidance in these areas, especially concerning the requirement that wives obey their husbands in everything. Christine questioned that, but she told herself it was none of her business and vowed to find out who the author was and return his manuscript before she could brood on it further. She turned to the pages of recipes, found something simple for her mother to make, and hurried downstairs to tell her about it.
But she couldn’t stop thinking about the wife whose behavior needed so much correction.
TWO
When the news of the king’s illness spread throughout the kingdom, all true French people cried as though an only son had died, so much was the well-being of France attached to his health.
The Monk of Saint-Denis,
Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denis,
contenant le règne de Charles VI de 1380 à 1422
The kitchen smelled of ashes, and the children danced around Georgette as she swept them into a corner. When Thomas began to taunt the hired girl with a silly poem about a servant who’d fallen down a well, Christine stamped her foot and cried, ‘Stop that.’
Francesca, sitting at the table cutting carrots and cabbages to use in soup, tried not to smile.
‘You are as bad as Thomas,’ Christine said.
‘There is no point in scolding him.’ Francesca put down her knife, went to her youngest grandson, and gave him a hug.
Lisabetta picked up some of the ashes and smeared them on her face. ‘I’ll be like the burned men,’ she announced.
Jean frowned at her and wiped the ashes off with his finger.
Christine sat on a stool next to the fireplace and drew Lisabetta onto her lap. As she hugged her, she thought of another child, the little prince she’d known when she’d lived at the palace. He’d been a happy, fun-loving boy, and when his father died and he became king, he’d seemed so strong and capable, even taking part in an important battle in Flanders when he was only fourteen, riding proudly with his troops, vanquishing the Flemish at Roosebeke, and laying siege to the city of Courtrai so his soldiers could bring home the golden spurs stolen from the French after their disastrous defeat there eighty years earlier. The people of France loved him then, and they still did. But everything had changed. He’d been struck down by an illness that had shattered his mind, and all of his subjects suffered because of it. To make matters worse, he’d participated in the lewd masquerade, and for many people that meant he’d become a fool as well as a madman. She’d seen for herself how much he’d changed when, a few days earlier, she’d found him walking in the palace gardens with his brother, wan and nervous, biting his fingernails down to the quick. Her heart ached for him.
Lisabetta jumped off her lap and ran to join Thomas, who was scampering around the room, pretending he was on fire. When the boy came close to Christine, she reached out, caught him in her arms, and held him tightly.
‘I’ve got a recipe for you, Mama,’ she said. ‘I know you’re going to buy fish at the market today, so you can make this simple soup. The old man writes that all you have to do is bray some almonds, boil them with powdered ginger and saffron, and pour the mixture over the fish after you’ve fried it. We’ll have it for supper.’
‘But you told me not to buy saffron, Cristina,’ Francesca said.
‘That’s true, I did.’ Christine frowned. ‘Make it without the saffron.’
‘The soup won’t be any good without the saffron,’ Thomas wailed. ‘Why can’t we have the saffron?’
‘Saffron is expensive, and we have to be careful with expenses,’ Christine said. ‘I don’t have any work.’
‘Why do you not go to the old man who wrote the manuscript on your desk and see if he will pay you for the copy?’ Francesca asked.
‘I’d have to find him first. The duchess never told me anything about him. I don’t even know his name.’
‘I do,’ said Georgette, who’d stopped her sweeping and stood resting her chin on the top of the broom handle as she followed every word of the conversation. ‘I know his name.’
‘What?’ Christine cried. She jumped up from the stool, letting go of Thomas. ‘How is that possible?’
‘You’re talking about those pages you brought home the day before the masquerade at the marriage ball, aren’t you?’ Georgette said.
Christine, so amazed she didn’t know what to say, nodded.
‘Well, I know who wrote them. My brother told me.’
‘Mon Dieu! Who is he?’
‘His name is Martin du Bois. He lives near here, in a big house on the corner of the rue des Rosiers and the rue des Escouffles.’
‘How does Colin know?’
‘He knows a boy who lives with him. The boy’s sister is married to the old man. He wrote something for her, and he told her she could have it after he loaned it to the Duchess of Orléans for a while. That must be what you brought home.’
Georgette thought for a moment. ‘Oh, something else,’ she giggled. ‘Colin says the wife told her husband that for all she cared the duchess could keep the silly book.’
‘I can’t believe she said that!’ Christine exclaimed, although when she thought of the pages devoted to a wife’s duty to obey her husband, she wasn’t so sure.
‘Well, I’m only telling you what Colin told me,’ Georgette said as she started sweeping again. ‘Colin always finds out about things.’
How true, Christine thought, remembering her own dealings with Georgette’s brother, who ran errands for the queen and seemed to have his nose into everything. She said, ‘I hope Colin knows what he’s talking about, because I’m going to visit this man and return the manuscript. If it’s not the right person, it will be very embarrassing.’
‘You won’t find him,’ Georgette said. ‘He’s disappeared.’
‘Disappeared? What are you talking about?’
‘Martin du Bois is gone. No one knows where, not even his wife.’
Christine had to sit down again. ‘Come over here, Georgette.’
Georgette set the broom against the wall, wiped her hands on her grimy apron, and stood in front of Christine, who asked, ‘What other interesting bits of information do you have about this man?’
‘Nothing. Just that he’s gone.’
‘He left his wife all alone?’ Francesca asked.
‘Well, she’s not exactly alone. There are servants.’
‘But the poor young woman must be frightened!’ Francesca said.
Georgette snickered. ‘According to Colin, she’s not too upset.’
‘I don’t believe everything Colin says.’ Christine stood up. ‘I’ll go to Martin du Bois’s house right now and find out what all this means. I need to return his manuscript, and this gives me a good excuse.’
‘But you p
romised to help me with the mending today!’ Francesca said.
Christine groaned. ‘So I did. I’ll go tomorrow.’
‘I will go with you,’ her mother said.
THREE
Ha! Painful fortune, how you have taken me from high to low.
Christine de Pizan, Ballade VII, c. 1402
The next morning, Colin appeared with a message: Christine was wanted at the palace. She hoped it was the queen, asking her to finish the wedding gift for the lady-in-waiting.
‘I thought we were going to see Martin du Bois,’ Francesca said.
‘The queen has summoned me. That’s more important,’ Christine said, and she was surprised when her mother didn’t object; usually when she said she was going to work at the palace, Francesca besieged her with a litany of worries about the evil influences there.
Colin waited for her, leaning against the door jamb, playing with a little knife. Christine thought how different he was from his sister. Georgette was fifteen, thick-set and clumsy, while Colin, a year younger, was thin and agile, and he seemed to be everywhere and to know everything that went on. Christine suspected that was why the queen used him to deliver messages; no doubt he reported back a great deal of information.
She got her cloak and went out into the street. Colin followed, and she knew he was hoping she would buy him a meat pasty or a crispy wafer from one of the vendors who hawked their wares on the rue Saint-Antoine, the broad paved street leading to the palace. When a snaggletooth crone approached and held out a basket filled with fragrant honey cakes, she bought two and gave one to the boy.
It was a sunny day, warm for February, and throngs of people were out taking advantage of the spring-like weather. A group of boys ran around making obscene gestures, trying to re-enact the fire at the palace, mimicking the burning men, screaming in pretended pain. Colin laughed, called out to the revelers, and would have spoken to them, but Christine pulled him away. She didn’t need any more reminders of the tragic masquerade.
Colin looked around, and when he didn’t see any more pastry vendors, announced that he had to go on another errand and left. Christine walked on, upset – not with Colin, for she was used to his ways – but with herself because she’d forgotten to ask him if he knew where Martin du Bois had gone.
To distract herself, she thought of happier, more secure times, when there had been no need for her to do anything but keep house and raise her children. Now fortune had dealt her a cruel blow, and nothing was secure.
Unlike her mother, she didn’t believe in ghosts, but she felt her husband’s presence, even though he’d died several years earlier while on a mission to another part of the country with the king. His body hadn’t been brought back to her, so she could picture him as he’d been when he was alive.
Concentrate on your work, he said.
‘What work?’ she asked.
She arrived at the palace, crossed the courtyard, and was accosted by a stocky little boy in a red jacket and a red cap who grabbed her hand and dragged her over to the big central fountain. ‘Talk to the lion!’ he ordered, pointing to the stone beast sitting at the top of a pillar in the middle of the fountain’s basin.
‘Not today, Renaut,’ she said, laughing. The boy had never forgotten the first time he’d seen her, when she’d slipped on the icy cobblestones and sworn at the stone lion as though it was its fault. She took the boy’s hand and led him to the palace entrance, where a large man holding a mace stood guard. The portier, whose name was Simon, smiled at her and hugged the boy, a child of seven whom he and his wife had adopted and who was now his constant companion.
‘The queen has summoned me,’ Christine said.
‘Not the queen,’ Simon said, pointing his mace at a man who was coming through the courtyard, a man she was embarrassed to meet because several weeks earlier she’d been convinced he’d committed a horrible crime. But here he was – Henri Le Picart, a small man with a little black beard wearing a hooded black cape with an ermine collar. He frowned when he saw her, bowed slightly, and with no further greeting said, ‘Follow me.’
She stayed where she was. Why did he think he could order her around like that?
Simon said, ‘You’d better go with him. He has a surprise for you.’
Reluctantly, she followed Henri into the palace. He strode through the great gallery, nodding to the guards standing silently at their posts but ignoring her as she trailed after him. He led the way along wide corridors, up narrow staircases, and through numerous winding passageways. At first she didn’t know where they were going, but when they came to a sparsely furnished room with bare walls, thin rugs, and a bench in front of a small fireplace, tears came to her eyes. This was where the Duchess of Orléans had lived, and where the formidable old woman had given her the housekeeping manuscript to copy. A few weeks earlier, the duchess had died in the plain wooden bed that stood against the wall, and Christine had been one of the last people to speak with her. In the short time she’d known her, she’d learned that the ascetic duchess was not the tyrant she seemed, and she’d become fond of her.
Henri sat down on a high-backed chair in front of a huge desk decorated with inlaid panels and carved scrolls. Out of place in the unadorned room, the desk and the chair had obviously been brought from another part of the palace for his use. Henri was a complicated man, and Christine didn’t know much about him except that he’d been a friend of her father’s and that he dabbled in alchemy and magic and had made a great deal of money. His plain black cape was deceptive, for under it he wore an elaborately pleated red houppelande with ermine trim, and his fingers sparkled with jeweled rings. He was not a man to tolerate austerity. Christine disliked him intensely, but she had to admit to herself that the elegant desk suited him.
Since Henri sat on the only chair in the room, Christine went to the fireplace and sat on the bench, fuming at the man’s rudeness. Henri didn’t seem to notice. He said, ‘The duchess was a friend of mine. Before she died, she asked me to take care of some business for her. She gave you a manuscript to copy, didn’t she?’
Christine resisted the temptation to say, If you know about it, why do you ask?
Among the papers lying on the desktop was a leather purse. Henri picked it up and held it out to her. ‘She asked me to give you this. She wanted to make sure you did not go without payment for your work.’ He pushed the chair back from the desk and gazed at her. ‘She admired you, you know, for risking your life to save an innocent woman.’
She felt herself blushing. The woman he was referring to had been accused of poisoning her husband and would have died at the stake if she hadn’t tracked down the real culprit. She was embarrassed, because she’d mistakenly thought the murderer was Henri. And she was humiliated, too, because she’d confronted the murderer by herself and had escaped certain death only because Henri had come to her rescue. She thought she detected a sympathetic look on his face, but she didn’t trust him, and she felt, as usual in his presence, irritated and out-of-sorts. Now her annoyance increased because she had to stand and go to the desk to receive the purse.
‘I haven’t done much work on the manuscript,’ she said.
‘That is of no consequence. The duchess was a just woman.’
Christine noticed, as she had the night he’d come to her rescue, that in spite of his disconcerting manner, his voice was not unkind. He watched as she opened the purse and looked inside. A wave of gratitude to the duchess swept over her. There were enough coins to support her family for a long time.
‘I need to return the manuscript to the man who wrote it,’ she said.
‘Just take the money.’
‘I can’t do that. The duchess didn’t tell me anything about him, but our hired girl thinks it was a man named Martin du Bois. Is that true?’
‘It is.’
‘Is it also true that Martin du Bois has disappeared?’
Henri nodded.
How does he know? she wondered. ‘Is he a friend of yours? Do you have
any idea where he is?’
‘You don’t need to know. Just keep the manuscript. I understand it contains a lot of information on how to run a household and a good quantity of recipes. Just the thing for a woman.’
‘Do you think that’s all women are good for?’
Henri laughed.
She turned, stalked out of the room, and made her way through all the corridors and passages until she arrived at the great gallery, shaking with anger. She tried to calm herself by studying the noblemen and commoners milling about in the vast space, but this didn’t do much to change her mood, for everyone seemed dispirited, as though a shadow hovered over them. It’s the fire, she thought. We’re all affected by the memory of it. She seemed to hear screams and smell smoke, though the masquerade had taken place in another part of the palace.
The crowd drew back as a handsome man wearing a green velvet cape lined with ermine and a beaver hat ornamented with peacock feathers strode in. It was the king’s brother, Louis, the Duke of Orléans. People began to whisper angrily, and Christine knew why; everyone thought the fire was the duke’s fault because he’d brought lighted torches into a room where there were men dressed in flammable costumes.
The duke passed by without glancing left or right. He looked unconcerned, but Christine knew he was suffering. He was an arrogant, proud man, prone to spells of remorse, when he would go to the church of the Celestine monks, near the palace, and pray for forgiveness, and for his soul. She’d heard he’d vowed to have a new chapel built there, to atone for the tragedy.
She could understand his anguish, for she’d seen him standing at the door to the room where the masquerade took place, holding lighted torches, watching in horror as four men burned to death. Suddenly she was back in her nightmare. The duke held two torches. There was another torch on the floor at her feet.