Iacobus (7 page)

We entered Paris on a hot and sunny summer’s morning, just a few days after Jonas’ fourteenth birthday, crossing the wall of Philip Augustus through the door of the tower of Nesle and coming out on the other side. As we couldn’t stay in the provincial captaincy of my Order, we sought shelter in a guest house in the suburbium of Marais, outside of the walls, in a hostel named Au Lion d’Or. The choice was not accidental: A few houses further down began what was once the populous Jewish quarters of Paris, now almost deserted following the expulsion ordered by Philip, and next to it, towering and majestic, the pointed towers of the monastery residency of the Knights Templar rose high in the sky. You only had to admire those walled constructions in the middle of the swampy ground for a moment and break it down into sectors to understand just how far the power and wealth of the Templars reached. More than four thousand people, including milites, refugees of royal justice, artisans, peasants and Jews had lived inside it. The truly amazing thing was not that Philip IV had the audacity to order the mass detention of its occupants in the middle of the night, no; the thing that was impossible to conceive is that he had gotten away with it. That fortress on the outskirts of Paris seemed really impregnable. Now it was in the hands of my Order and although it pained me to say it, there was nothing left of its prior splendor.

Our room at the Hostel Au Lion d’Or was large and sunny and had a wide scrinium for working, a small table with a sink and superb views over the fields of the Marais forisburgus
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. Furthermore, and most importantly, the meals cooked by the owner weren’t all that bad. My wooden bed was in the middle of the room and Jonas’ straw cot was under the window. At first I thought it would be best to swap places to avoid him getting pneumonia but then I changed my mind. Lying there he could look at the constellations and the celestial phenomena. A couple of blankets would be enough to ward off the cold of night.

If you don’t mind my saying, I would say that the only bad thing about Paris is that it’s full of people. Everywhere you look there are groups of students, actors performing their art, merchants discussing prices, nobles hunting for adventure, peasants, workers, chaplains on their way to their residences or the numerous convents in the city, Jews, vagabonds, paupers, painters, goldsmiths, prostitutes, gamblers, royal guards, knights, nuns … They say that two hundred thousand people live there, and it even got to a point where the authorities had to put heavy chains at the ends of the streets to be able to block them off and moderate the circulation of people, coaches and riders. I had never seen in any other city — and I’ve been to a lot throughout my life —, traffic as terrible as that of Paris. Not a day goes by that somebody isn’t killed from being run over by the carriage of a speed lover. Naturally, with such commotion, robberies are as common as the Pater Noster, and you have to be very careful that your bag of gold isn’t stolen without you even realizing. And to finish off the list of bad things about Paris, I would say that if there is one thing that is more abundant than the people, it’s the rats, rats as big as pigs. Any day in this city can be exhausting.

In the middle of that craziness I had to find a woman called Beatrice of Hirson, lady-in-waiting to Matilda of Artois, mother-in-law of Philip V the Long, King of France. The passes in my name from the Valencian Order of Montesa were of little help to be admitted in the presence of a woman like Beatrice of Hirson, who, although it seemed was lacking a noble title, must have descended from a very long-established French nobility to hold office as the lady-in-waiting of the powerful Matilda. I was thinking about it for quite a while and finally reached the conclusion that it would be best to write a letter of presentation which would hint, with exquisite subtlety, that my interest in seeing her was related to a matter regarding her former lover, William of Nogaret. This, if my suspicions were correct, would provoke an immediate reception.

I took great care in writing the letter and sent Jonas to the Cité Palace to hand it to her in person, if that was possible; I didn’t want those words falling into the wrong hands. Meanwhile, I spent the morning going over my notes and planning my next moves. A quick visit to the Pont-Sainte-Maxence forest, a few miles north of Paris, was compulsory to study in person the place where Philip IV the Fair, father of the current King, had fallen from his horse, as was told, and had been attacked by a huge deer. According to the reports that His Holiness had given me, on the morning of the 26th of November 1314, the King had gone out hunting in the forest of Pont-Sainte-Maxence, accompanied by his servant, Hugo of Bouville, his personal secretary, Maillard and some relatives. When they reached the area, which the King knew well as he often hunted there, the peasants told him that a rare deer with twelve antlers and a beautiful gray coat had been seen on the outskirts of the forest on two recent occasions. The King, eager to conquer that impressive specimen, went after the deer so fast that he ended up leaving his companions behind and getting lost in the forest. When they found him a while later, he was lying on the ground saying over and over: ‘The cross, the cross …’. He was immediately taken to Paris although (even though he could barely speak) he asked to be taken to his dear palace in Fontainebleau, where he had been born. The only sign of violence that the doctors could find on his body was a blow to the back of his head which surely must have happened when he fell from his horse and was attacked by the deer. He died following twelve days of dementia during which his only and constant wish was to drink water, and when he died, to the horror of those present and the court in general, his eyes could not be shut. According to my copy of Reinaldo’s report, the Grand Inquisitor of France — who accompanied the King during his last days —, the eyelids of the deceased monarch opened again and again, and they had to be covered with a blindfold before he was buried.

It was clear to me that there were many unanswered questions in that report, for example: Why hadn’t the King sounded his horn when he was attacked by the deer? Where was the pack of dogs? Who had seen this deer with the impossible antlers? Had anyone actually caught this deer after the accident? How could the King get lost in an area that he supposedly knew like the back of his hand? As far as his symptoms, thirst, inability to express himself, dementia, rebellious eyelids, all this fit in well with the blow to his head. I had read about cases of people who, if they managed to wake up following a blow like that and didn’t die, their character had changed forever or they had gone crazy or they mechanically repeated words or body movements without any sense or they had visions or an insatiable hunger was awoken within them that ended up killing them or, like in this case, an unbearable thirst. I wasn’t worried about that as it was clear that the blow to the head was the cause of all that but those words, ‘the cross, the cross …’. What cross was the Kind referring to?

Jonas came back a couple of hours later with his shirt hanging out of his doublet, his shoes covered in mud and his cheeks rosy.

“What news do you bring me?” I asked him, smiling.

“Paris is the most beautiful city in the whole world!” he exclaimed, letting the length of his body fall on his cot.

“Have you by any chance met a pretty girl?” I lifted my head slightly and he looked at me with reproach.

“I am still a novicius.”

“It seems that you won’t be for much longer,” I commented, placing my pen and scaepellum to one side. “Did you manage to give the letter to Beatrice of Hirson?”

“It was terrible, sire! You see, I got to the area of the palace they call La Conciergerie, where the court lives, and which is truly the most beautiful building in France. The gate guards wouldn’t let me through, of course, and I asked them to advise the lady that I had an important message for her. First of all they laughed at me but, with my insistence, they sent a boy inside the palace. He took a long time to come back and when he did he said that the lady would not see me because she didn’t know who I was nor who you were, sire. I really don’t understand,” he said grouchily, “how you sent me so innocently on such a complicated mission. Didn’t you know that you can’t just go and see nobility like that?”

“Nobility, my dear Jonas, the real nobility, doesn’t have much to do with the courtiers.”

“Well, sire, you can’t just get a message to the courtiers like that.”

“And how did you resolve the problem?” I asked with interest.

“And how do you know that I resolved it?”

“Because your attitude would have been very different had you not been able to fulfill your order. To start with, you wouldn’t have come in here with that joyous look on your face, nor would you be telling your odyssey with that tone of reproach if you had not succeeded. Thus, you emphasize your victory.”

“What is odyssey?”

“Good heavens, Jonas! You are ignorant! Did you not read the beautiful work of De bello Troiano by Iosephus Iscanus at the monastery, or the popular Ilias Latina by Silio Italico, that even the goliards in universities recite?”

“Do you want to hear the end of my story or not?” he interrupted, annoyed.

“I do, but we are going to have to have a serious conversation one of these days about the matter of your education.”

“Well, I was walking around the Cité for a while, looking at the work of the new Cathedral of Notre-Dame and visiting the chapels of St.-Denis-du-Pas and St.-Jean-le-Rond, where people leave abandoned babies like me at night, did you know that?”

“How would I know that?”

“Well, after a while I returned to La Conciergerie, determined not to move until I had found a way to deliver the message. Since I was bored, I sat down next to an old woman who was selling fried cakes at the gate and struck up an interesting conversation about the habits of the inhabitants of the palace. She told me that Matilda of Artois’ carriage would soon be coming out, just as it did every day, through one of the side gates on the rue de la Barillerie, and if I kept my eyes open, I would be able to see her go down the Tour de l’Horage. Then she told me that a woman of such importance cannot go out during the day if she is not accompanied by her ladies, so this Beatrice of Hirson would most surely be inside the carriage. As soon as the old woman pointed out the luxurious vehicle belonging to the Queen’s mother, I calculated the distance, the speed and the jump necessary to climb through the door of the carriage.”

“Good God, Jonas!”

“You would do well not to swear in front of me, sire, or I will be forced to stop talking to you!”

“Don’t be so prissy, boy!” I protested angrily, stamping my foot firmly on the ground, shaking the wood. “Rather than a novicius, you seem more like a delicate damsel at times. I have known several novicius with worse vocabulary than mine.”

“They must be the ones from your Order, who are neither novicius, nor anything else.”

I wanted to slap him but I remembered just in time that, not in vain, and largely due to my own fault, he had spent fourteen years with Mauricense monks. His evolution was fast and favorable, so I had to give him more time.

“God damn it,” I shouted at the top of my lungs, punching my scrinium, “finish your story once and all!”

Somebody else in his place would have cowed but not him. He sat comfortably with his back leaning against the wall and looked at me brazenly.

“Well, when Matilda of Artois’ carriage was approaching, I gained momentum by running and jumped right in front of the nose of one of the guard’s horses. My height favored my ruse. I stuck my head through the window and asked with a soft and gallant voice, so as not to frighten the ladies: ‘Are any of you ladies Beatrice of Hirson?’ There were three women inside, and I wouldn’t have been able to tell who was who; the funny thing is, is that the eyes of the two ladies turned to the third, who remained silent and scared in a corner of the carriage. I deduced that she was Beatrice and I held out my hand with your letter but at that point the guards were pulling me from behind, shouting like crazy and hitting me on my back and backside with all their might. I looked at the lady, gave her my best smile so as to look like a young gallant, and let the note fall onto her dress as I said affectionately: ‘Read it ma’am, it’s for you.’ I flew out onto the ground but luckily I landed on my feet in a muddy puddle.” I sighed and looked with sorrow at his dirty, new shoes. “The guards hit me until I started running like the devil’s soul towards Pont aux Meuniers, losing myself in the swarm of people. So,” he concluded, with satisfaction, “what do you think of my performance?”

My chest was bursting with paternal pride.

“Not bad, not bad,” I muttered with a frown. “But you could have ended up in the King’s dungeon.”

“But I’m here and everything worked out splendidly. The lady has your note and now we just need to wait for a reply. I like Paris! Don’t you?”

“If it’s a question of choice, I prefer a more peaceful kind of city.”

“Yes, I understand,” he muttered innocently. “Old age has a lot of influence on taste.”

Pont-Sainte-Maxence was such a deep and dark forest that, even though it was a sunny spring morning the further in we got, the greater my grim feeling of entering a place full of unknown dangers and mysteries grew. On a couple of occasions I looked up at the tree tops and could barely make out a pinprick of sunlight. Only the birds seemed to be happy, high up in those trees. It was undoubtedly the ideal place for hunting deer, whose bleating could be heard all around, although it seemed more like a damned forest, property of the followers of Evil, than a pleasant place for idleness.

It wasn’t far from Paris — it took about two hours at a comfortable trot to cover the fifteen miles —, but the difference between one place and the other was as great as that which separates any part of the world from hell. It was not a surprise therefore that following the sad passing of King Philip the Fair, the court had stopped hunting in those territories of the Crown.

Jonas and I were advancing slowly, cautiously following a path through the undergrowth, looking around as if we were afraid of suddenly being attacked by an army of evil spirits. So when we heard the muffled sound of an ax hitting wood, our hearts skipped a beat and we stopped the horses with a sharp tug on the reins.