What I saw next alarmed me even more. The white flag at the priory of the Poor Clares was hanging by a prayer. A gust flattened me upon the roof. When the mistral eased long enough for me to stand upright again, the flag was gone. I scrambled into the stairwell and down the steps, to find Clement’s stewards rushing between the garde-robe
and bedchamber to clothe him in his amice, alb, stole, chasuble, and cope. I was in the procession when the Pope rode his white mule to the riverbank to consecrate the expanse of the Rhône, blessing it by breadth and length, so that the plague victims tipped into its currents would be remitted of their sins.
Having seen the bloated corpses for himself, Clement sat next to his fire, reading dispatches and giving free rein to his natural fears. His humours were out of alignment, veering gloomily towards melancholy. But who was I to belittle his terror, since it was as much for his people as himself? I lived with my own fear, for the Poor Clares had not hoisted their flag since the mistral.
One night in my own bed, I shook myself out of a paralytic state and went to Clement’s bedchamber. I emerged from the hidden staircase to find him propped on the short papal bed, his lips stained red by courage-giving wine. His jowls were grossly enflamed, his skull was bandaged, and his eyelids were bruised. He told me that waking alone and falling prey to apprehensions, he had sent for his old surgeon, Jean de Parme. I lifted the bandage to see what was beneath. Jean de Parme had drilled a hole, which now oozed fluid into the flimsy gauze.
Clement was enunciating more precisely than usual. “It is only a small hole to let the ill humours escape.”
I crawled beneath the fur coverings to comfort him. “Did the drilling hurt?”
“Very little. The vapours made a malevolent hiss as they shot out.”
We lay together, his hand idling on my thigh, going nowhere, until he fell asleep and I rolled to face the window. At dawn, a rare burst of sun penetrated the deep embrasure, exposing the much-scraped parchment of his skin. I was growing old as well and did not relish looking in the pier-glass as much as formerly. Soon I might wear the guimpe and mantle of a mature woman.
But not just yet. I was pulling on my azure robe when in came Hugues Roger with the surgeon de Chauliac, who seemed to have
taken command of the fight against the plague. Hugues Roger was hitching up his belt as if he had dressed in haste. After them arrived Captain Aigrefeuille of the pointed stars, with the jailer Renaud de Pons. Five or six other men, all vital to palace operations, entered the room. The servants spilled out of curtains to begin the morning routine and the old steward threw a brick of antimony and arsenic on the fire. The odour was perverse, but Clement believed that it drove off any plague fumes that rose this high.
“Knot faster,” I told my maid, who was fastening my sleeves. I had very nearly been caught sleeping like a servant.
De Chauliac approached the bed. He surveyed the Pope’s tranquility and his puffy face, then peeled the gauze back to inspect the lesion. From this, I gathered that de Chauliac had encouraged the trepanning of Clement’s skull. He applied his fingers to Clement’s armpits and groin, searching for growths, then palpated his bladder for stones, a humiliating exercise repeated every morning before the surgeon proclaimed that the papacy was in good health. But why had de Chauliac brought the captain and the jailer with him?
The old steward robed the Pope while de Chauliac’s bony fingers examined me through my clothes, prodding along my collarbone, beneath my arms, and deep between my legs, where plague-eggs might be lodging. He pushed up my eyelids with his thumbs, looked at one eye, then the second.
De Chauliac made a smug bow, one hand at his navel, the other at his back. “Holy Father, observe how the Countess sweats. She is carrying the plague.”
This was absurd. “I have no symptoms,” I protested. “I may be moist, but so would any woman swathed in layers of linen, wool, and sendal.”
Again he spoke to the Pope, not to me. “When she went out amongst the flagellants, she drew contagion into her as a lightning-rod draws light. She is the source of the ill humours that have been unsettling you.
The servants complain of a dark miasma issuing from her eyes. You must turn your gaze from her at once.” He snapped his fingers for Aigrefeuille to step between the Pope and me.
“If I had been infected by the flagellants,” I said, “I would have died several weeks ago.”
My maid threw herself at the surgeon helpfully. “On that night, she left the palace at the darkest hour. I followed her through the postern gate to a brothel.”
The words fell heavily upon my chest. She might have followed me into the alleyways behind the palace, even past a brothel, but no further. However, to prove my innocence, I would need to confess that I had gone to the Poor Clares’ priory and Aigrefeuille’s men would unearth Félicité. Since she was already thought dead, her life would be worth a toss of salt. Once Clement had taken it in, he would be forced to put me aside, as he had warned me years before.
Aigrefeuille said, “Your Holiness, the Countess has wilfully endangered your life.”
“What would happen to Holy Mother Church if you fell ill?” the camerlengo asked. “The death of the Pope would sink the city.”
Only Clement and his brother showed any pity for me. Hugues Roger was knocking the dust thoughtfully from his hose. “I have been talking to the ironmongers, that peculiar guild of red-haired men who are working on the palace. They used scraps of her garments to soak up her blood during the riot in the piazza and swear these devotos have protected them from the plague. What if there is some truth in this?”
Clement swivelled hopefully. “Then she has kept the disease from me, not brought it.”
“If this is true, Holy Father, it is necromancy,” the surgeon said. “Consider that she touched the dying friar, but did not die.”
“You also touched the plague-ridden and are alive,” I countered. “I am a prophet, not a necromancer.”
The surgeon’s rebuttal was quick. “A prophet who has not prophesied since the eclipse.”
But Clement would not be put off. “If tokens of her blood and clothing ward off pestilence, her charisms go beyond prophecy to the miraculous.”
“My dear Pope,” the camerlengo said, “you must stop looking for saints under every bed-sheet. Think how much it cost us to canonize Saint Yves, yet nobody takes him seriously but you.”
The camerlengo and the surgeon gathered Clement into their conversation and walked him from the chamber. The other officers followed, circling him with their iron will.
Hugues Roger stayed with me in the bedchamber. “Clement has received another vicious letter by Francesco Petrarch. This time he signed it. He says that the Pope’s doctors are charlatans who are trying to kill him and reports a blow Clement took to his skull that sharpened his memory. You must have told Petrarch about the trepanning.”
“How could he have heard of it in Italy so swiftly?”
He looked at me sharply. “You were not aware? Jean de Parme drilled Clement once before.”
“Then Petrarch heard about it some other way. All the Tuscans know one another’s business. Any one of them could have told him.” Guido, I thought, though I did not say it, or any of the other Italian notaries.
He relented. “Yes, I see that now, but you cannot blame me for suspecting. You come and go too freely. Who can tell how many men you sleep with—where, or when?” His eyes lifted my hem to dine on possibilities. His pity gone, he planted his hand on my breast, his oily palm a lubricant to something more. When the back of my legs hit his brother’s bed, his knee spread them apart. “This is not the only ermine pillow in the palace.”
We had both been faithful to Our Lord, the Pope, but now that Clement must cast me aside, I saw what Hugues Roger was wanting:
the right to claim the spoil. “No,” I said. “I will go to my estates in Turenne.” At his laugh, my gut knotted.
He twisted my arm to rip off the sleeve with the Turenne crest, and stuffed it into his shirt. “This will go to the Pope’s new consort.”
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
T
HE 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.