Muse (15 page)

“Stand out of sight behind the shrubbery, where Checco stands in the morning to watch Laura comb her hair at the window.”

He watched her comb her hair at the window?
I stared at the house in disbelief. The garden was being readied for the fête of Saint Michel. The master, a man of advanced years, was giving his servants directions about a heavy basket. They dragged it into the shade, while Gherardo lounged at the edge of the garden, trying to catch the steward’s eye. As soon as the steward saw Gherardo, he hurried him from view, for the ladies were entering in flowing surcots to pick sugared grapes from the decorated shrubs. At their centre was the pale maiden with the large nose and flaxen hair, wearing a pearl choker around her neck. Her abdomen was gently rounded and her head erect, probably from balancing a psalter on it in deportment lessons. I watched her until Gherardo returned without the broadsides, flipping a purse with satisfaction.

“You have been selling our poems to Laura’s father!”

His mouth split into a grin. “Not her father, her husband—Hugues de Sade. They call him
le Vieux
. He’s a jumped-up bourgeois, the owner of the de Sade woollen looms. She is the one with the noble blood, the daughter of the chevalier Audibert de Noves, who gave her that nose.”

So Laura was married, and to a man twice her age. Gherardo’s vulgarity did not change the facts. It sickened me to think that Francesco found Laura even more desirable because he could not have her. He knew that Laura’s husband guarded her vigilantly from admirers. That was why the doe’s collar was inscribed with Caesar’s words,
Nessun mi tocchi. Touch me not
.

“Where did Francesco tell you to take the broadsides?”

“He wanted me to carry them as love gifts to Laura, but why waste good verses?”

Love gifts to Laura?
I stumbled backwards, as wretched as a child who has eaten a bellyful of unripe fruit. Was this what lovesickness felt like, a cold sweat followed by a rabid fever? My heartache must have showed, for Gherardo was sizing me up, probably wishing he had not brought me.

“Instead of giving the poems away, I sell them to put provisions in our larder,” he said, “like knocking two apples from the same tree. Do not even consider reporting this to Francesco. If you do, I will tell him that Laura saw you spying on her.”

We both knew that Francesco’s pride would not bear such a thing. Whatever name he gave to me—and I could only fear what it was—he must be ashamed of our connection. This was why he had told me our betrothal must always be written on the sand and air, not parchment. It would not further Francesco’s standing as a love poet for it to come out that he had carnal dealings with a flesh-and-blood woman. Worse, if he was humiliated, everything between us—every joy I felt when by his side—would be snatched away from me.

From behind the shrubbery, we watched the entertainment taking place. The nobles and their wives gathered as de Sade gave Laura a beribboned key. When she unlocked the large basket, the four sides fell flat onto the ground to reveal a turbaned youth folded into a human puzzle. First one black arm emerged, then another, then a leg and a second leg. He must have been in pain, but he stood to full height, slowly and proudly, in his blue loincloth, as all the guests applauded.

I suppose it was something to boast of, having a poet in love with your wife in the troubadour fashion, like having an Indian in a box who would unfold himself for your guests for a few coins. However—and this gave me a moment’s satisfaction—Gherardo should have taken a closer look at the poems before selling them. De Sade would approve of the sonnet on the taming of the doe, but he would not like Francesco’s madrigal about the woman bathing in the pool at Fontaine-de-Vaucluse. De Sade might well wonder what his pale, perfect wife had been up to and tighten the collar around her neck. Perhaps he would even throw her—and her lovesick poet—to the hounds.

Nineteen

W
HEN
G
HERARDO
next arrived at the Cheval Blanc with a fistful of poems for copying, I sent them back to Francesco. He even tried sending Guido Sette with a letter, but I told Guido to return it to Francesco. Laura was festering between us, a wound gone septic. I punished myself with his absence for seven days. I
would
triumph over my desire for him. I
would
.

On the eighth day, Francesco arrived, evidently believing that he could cajole me into better humour. He dragged over Luc’s chair and spun it around to sit facing me.

“If you brought work, put it beneath those manuscripts. I will do it when I have time.”

“These are our poems, Solange, the ones we are composing together.”

“Those you must take to another copyist, if you can find one who writes bâtarde as well as I do.”

His face was a study—puzzled, unbelieving. “Were you not proud to copy the last poems? Many of them travelled from your heart to my
head and back to your pen. And now I am presenting them to the nobles of Avignon.”

Had my love only fed his vanity? Certainly, my stomach was no fuller and neither was my purse. “You must begin to pay me, Francesco. I have made Luc a journeyman, but I cannot frank him unless I keep us both employed.”

“Pay you for what?” His hand grazed my arm.

“For my copying, of course.”

“And the other? Is that free?” He was teasing me. “I will be able to pay you when my friendship with Giacomo di Colonna matures. His recognition sets me in good standing with men of influence.”

“And drives a wedge between us,” I said bitterly.

“You and I are as close as this”—he wove his fingers together—“but I cannot write about it for the nobility to read. The seigneurs wish to hear a poet paying tribute to one of their own.”

“You mean Madame de Sade.”

“So that is why you are out of temper. You know the code of amour courtois as well as I do. I write poems to noblewomen as a courtesy to their families. My reputation is growing amongst these rich chevaliers.”

Bold, piercing words, since he had yet to find a patron. “Your ambition blinds you, Francesco. Even if you receive great honours, only your name will appear on the poems, not mine. Love poetry is always written by a man, not a woman.”

He did not deny it. “I will share all the rewards and praise with you.” He walked the legs of his chair closer so he could place a much-folded sheet on the table between us. “Listen as I read this and tell me where the rhythm falters.”

It was a worked-up poem, one we had created jointly, a temptation I could not resist. But this was not all he wanted in the half-dark of evening, and in my half-folly, half-wisdom, I gave it to him. I defy any woman to put aside a man who can bring her to the crest of desire and ease her down again. He lay beside me afterwards, and I could scarcely breathe. His arm
lingered across my breasts as the moon slanted through the shutters and his fingers throbbed gently, as if mapping out the verses of a new poem.

The seasons drifted by, cold and achingly damp, then hot and sweet, until autumn came round again. Late on Saint Martin’s Eve, the wind blew up, banging the shutters on the Cheval Blanc and scraping my ears raw. In the morning, I went outside to observe the damage. Hollowed by heart-rot, the ancient sycamore had broken at the waist and fallen into the canal. It had split the blades of the paddlewheel, justifying the cloth-workers’ hatred of it all these years.

Would the mistral blow three, six, or nine days this time? I stuffed the shutters full of straw to keep out draughts, then lit the lamp on my table. Between now and Quadragésime, fifteen weeks by the calendar, Luc and I would need lamplight for copying, as well as a fire to warm our fingers and drive the moisture out of the parchment. At least we no longer had to solicit trade. Merchants and tradesmen sought us out with more work than we could copy.

Even now, a parade of boots sounded on the stairs. The officials of the Worshipful Company of Leather-workers swept in wearing festival gowns so long they dragged. At their head was the bookseller, Belot, who had been the leader of this band of ruffians for as long as I had known him.

I put down my quill. “What do you want, Belot?”

“To inspect your workshop.”

“I do not belong to your confraternity,” I pointed out. “I asked to join, but you did not let me.”

He signalled to his confrères to begin. If they challenged my ability as a scribe, I would counter with examples of my finest work. Most of them had no claim to be literate, let alone scribes. The most talented amongst them was Belot’s parchmenter, who ripped the skin from dead
calves and cut it into book-sized pieces. I bought my parchment from him to keep Belot at arm’s length, paying through the nose for the privilege. Years ago Belot and I had come to an agreement. I could copy for anyone I wished, as long as I gave the binding work to him.

I stood aside as Belot prodded my supplies with his knife, lifting sheets to see what lay beneath. He seemed surprised at the quality of my copybooks, amongst them a good psalter and a decorated book of hours. Codices awaited payment, all bound at Belot’s own workshop, for I had been scrupulous. A felt-lined case popped open to expose ink-pots from Paris. Belot dunked a monstrous finger in the grey liquid, smeared it on parchment, and held the mess over my lamp to see whether the ink darkened. Oak-gall, the highest quality, with a trace of wormwood to keep mice away. He sniffed the pot to be certain. When he turned up nothing to use against me, he motioned to the shortest of his confrères, who reached into his gown for a maroon-bound volume.

Belot pawed to the final page. “This is your colophon, yet the book was bound by a Florentine in Carpentras. Is that or is that not the stranger’s mark, Rostand?”

“Ouais,” the short man agreed. “Mais voilà.”

I took it from him to a chorus of sniggers. On the binding, a man and woman embraced in a loggia. Inside were the delicate poems, now smudged by crude fingerprints, that Dante had written about Beatrice. The
Vita Nuova
I had copied at Clairefontaine. I had last seen it when I lent the unbound quires to Francesco, who had promised to guard them vigilantly.

“This is mine. Where did you get it?”

“From a pawnbroker in the Jewry,” Belot said, “for a florin.”

I could scarcely take it in—Francesco must have pawned my copy, although he knew I had written each word painstakingly by hand. Belot had likely paid less, but I gave him the florin anyway. “Now, leave and take your bloodhounds with you.”

His lips drew back around his yellowed teeth. “You have broken our agreement by paying swindlers to do your binding. You have taken bread from our mouths. Has she not, gentlemen?” The chorus of fools concurred and he proclaimed, “You are henceforth barred from copying in the city!”

If I defended myself, the confraternity would trump up another charge, for their real complaint was that I had been charging a lower tariff for better calligraphy. My facility with scripts and languages had brought me work no one would entrust to them, but saying so was no way to win them over.

“Let me beg the privilege, once more, of joining your confraternity,” I said. “I will pay back fees for six years, enough to mount your feast of the Virgin. Don’t be pigheaded. You won’t get another denier if you drive me out of business.”

Belot crossed his arms judicially. “No woman can work for us unless she is a wife, daughter, or widow of a guilds-man.” This wisdom was cheered by his confrères, large and small. Belot pointed at the shortest, the bookbinder with the bandy legs. “You there! Confiscate her leather goods and let no man sell her more!”

But this short fellow had a mind of his own. He had not washed and combed his hair to visit the female scribe only to have Belot order him around. He spat upon the floor, declaring, “You do not need to be my wife to work for me. You can be my paramour, my leman!”

At this fine offer, the men broke out in whoops and hollers, patted one another festively on the back, and shoved the bookbinder towards me like a bridegroom. I propelled him back, cursing him in the old tongue, which he understood, for he spat some insults at me and led the confrères in stripping my shelves bare of goods, ready quires, and parchment. They broke my table, stomped on my quills, and left in good cheer, carrying away everything of value. I was now blacklisted and no one in the Worshipful Company of Leather-workers could hire me without violating the city’s guild system.

As Belot packed off my case of Paris ink, the tinny bell sounded for prayer at the chapel of the Pénitents gris. Outside, the mistral was howling, settling in for a lengthy stay. My livelihood was gone. My scriptorium lay in ruins and everything I had worked for had been swept away. My days as a femme seule were over. Fortune had grimaced and spun her wheel, unseating me once more.

Twenty

I
N THE COOL OF MORNING
, I hung out the window to listen to the water rushing over the paddlewheel’s new blades and watch the dyers’ children playing along the canal. My own day began a little later. I worked for merchants in their premises or directly from the street, operating from a stall I could pack up if any of Belot’s men appeared. Over the winter, I saw little of Francesco, who had been drawn more deeply into Giacomo di Colonna’s circle. In June, Giacomo rode west to Lombez to take up his post as bishop, with his men riding in convoy, Francesco amongst them. Francesco’s letters to me were full of banter—long, elegant meanderings of keen observation. I knew that they were written not so much to me as to posterity, and I refolded them to return to him. At summer’s end, Francesco wrote to say that the bishop had recommended him to his brother, Cardinal Colonna. He signed his name in the Italian manner,
Petrarca
.