Muse (10 page)

Thirteen

A
FTER NINE YEARS TOGETHER
, the abbess had separated Elisabeth and me. I was as lonely as an anchorite in the guest-house, where the abbess had put me to have freedom to reflect. Elisabeth was faring better than I was. Her warts had shrunk and she was now the cellaress’s assistant, a fitting job for someone quicker with weights and measures than with words.

The inquisition in the chapter house had sobered me and the solitude had given me time to think. The animosity of the nuns had been replaced by indigestion now that they were eating meat and cream, but those who had called me a sorcière might do so again. What would the future hold now that the abbess had elevated me so far above the others? The nuns were already lowering their voices as they passed me in the cloister. The abbess had set me to reading the mystics, schooling me to be a visionary. Before long, she would send for the abbot to profess Elisabeth as Sister Martha and me as Sister Marie-Ange. Once we had taken our vows, we would be wedded to both Christ and Clairefontaine, yet I felt less fitted for this rôle than ever. Even Elisabeth seemed to have more of a calling than I did.

Each evening after vespers, the old abbey cat and I sought comfort in the empty scriptorium. I was staying late in the summer light to finish my own copy of
La Vita Nuova
and Ambrose was curled up on the warmth of my toes, too indolent these days to chase marauding spiders. In here, the soothing water clock still regulated time. The rising moon spilled through the glass window, giving me enough light to copy Dante’s final lines. The familiar words enfolded me, but the nib was flooding with ink and needed shaping.

I carried my knife to Ursula’s desk to sharpen it. Tomorrow, at Pentecost, I would use it to cut a fifteenth stroke into my thigh. I ran Ursula’s whetstone along the blade, noticing that she had begun to decorate a small book of hours. A nobleman astride a white stallion, a clerk in particoloured hose, a stocky tradesman with a hairy chest—youths she must have known before she entered the abbey. Why had she turned her back on the world of men? In one miniature, a tall, high-breasted girl combed her tangled hair in front of a mirror. On the girl’s bed, ready for her vows, lay a Benedictine habit and a pair of shears. A basin and chipped ewer, night shoes by the open door, worn stairs winding down to church—all had come skilfully alive without an extra stroke. I realized that when the Florentine finally took an assistant, it would be Ursula, not me.

But I was a better scribe. This was my vocation and I embraced it passionately. I intended to become a renowned scribe, one of the few Benedictines known across Europe by their signatures at the end of exquisitely penned manuscripts. I returned to my desk to copy Dante’s last words and ink my colophon for the first time. I drew it painstakingly, an act of love. As I blew it dry, I heard a curse. The Florentine had entered the dark scriptorium, banging into one of the writing desks. Deafened by his own noise, he did not sense me until I spoke.

“You will see well enough when your eyes adjust.”

“Ah, it is our new master scribe. I hear you are adept at changing the colour of calves inside the womb. Why don’t you try your charisms
on me and see how you fare? I will be a willing vassal.” His big hand descended on my colophon. “Signing your work already?”

Why was everyone envious of me? When his hand shifted, I closed the folio, corked my ink-pot, and wiped my quill. His habit stank and he was more than commonly drunk.

“Stay and talk to me,” he said, “or I will tell the abbess that I taught you Italian.”

“She has found out already.” I placed my knife in its groove and squared my folios, then weighed them down with a piece of slate.

“And if I tell her of Elisabeth’s sin?”

“What do you mean?”

He spat out some vulgar Tuscan that disgusted me. So he was the one who had held Elisabeth down, causing the vicious welts. And I was caught alone with him, as Elisabeth had been. There was no use calling out, because the bells had rung for compline and the nuns would be singing lustily, drowning out all other sounds. I took a few steps backwards, away from him.

“You used her, then cast her off,” I accused.

He scraped some blue pigment from the back of his hand. “She came to me, begging for companionship. Her thighs fell open readily.”

I knew this was a lie. Perhaps Elisabeth had gone to him one time, hoping for affection, but she would only have returned if he had threatened to report her to the nuns. “You made her big with child,” I said, regretting my words instantly.

“If that is so, where is it? Her belly is no bigger than it always was.” He considered this almost meditatively. “I suppose you two got rid of it. What coin will buy my silence now? Will you pay as Elisabeth did, opening her legs at my bidding?”

My knees almost buckled beneath my habit. “So you admit you forced her?”

“Once a woman has tasted a man, she hungers for him. I will be gentle if you do not anger me.” One hand fumbled inside his scapular
near his groin and the other pushed against the wall to block my way. “I hear that your mother had a talent in this also. All the monks in our monastery knew of her—one of the best whores in the Cheval Blanc.”

Everything I had eaten was jostling and heaving inside me. “I have had enough of your lies!” I shouted.

“It is no lie. You told everyone in the refectory yourself when the abbot attended the feast of All Saints. Do you forget? You said that when you were still inside the womb, you saw a priest lying on top of your mother in her bed in the tavern.”

So I had, but I had not realized what my vision meant. Nor did I wish to think about it now—all I wanted was to get past him to the door.

His words trickled out, oily and black. “The abbess has the wrong idea about your destiny. It is in your blood to be a whore.”

I spat at him, unable to speak two angry words together. This seemed to excite him, rather than the reverse, and he stepped towards me. He dropped his cowl and his scapular, and loosened the cord at his waist. Then he stripped off his robe and posed naked, bold with drink. He plunged his hand into the librarian’s almond oil to grease his phallus. He was lecherous and hell-bound for it, and I grew weak with fear. Ambrose rubbed against his leg, as if trying to distract him, but the Florentine kicked him aside and the cat hit the stone wall with a lifeless thud.

The Florentine backed me up against my writing desk. Every part of me was trembling now. Even if the nuns heard me scream and came running, they might misinterpret what they saw. After calling me a sorcière, the chapter could easily condemn me as a whore. He was now so close that I could see his bloodshot eye and smell his fœtid breath. Taking a blow from my elbow, he shunted a little to the side, then twisted my hair about his fist, wrenched me around, and slammed my face onto my writing desk. He groped at my tunic, pulled it over my head, and bent my wrist behind my back to pin me down. His hand gained strength, became a hoof, a claw tearing at my flesh. His thigh
jammed me against the desk, lifting me and splaying my legs. He entered me from behind, as large and brutal as a bull.

Unable to move, I could only weep until it was over. I freed my arm and reached for my hem to wipe the vomit from my mouth. He withdrew and let out a burp of satisfaction. This small, strange act of rudeness brought me back to life.

Like the night, I was dark and cold. Like the rat, I was swift.

I was blind with rage. I could not see. I could not speak. But I could still feel.

I felt for the knife on my desk and turned towards him, his naked body sagging against the wall, his lips slack, his eyelids half-closed. With my right hand, I seized the sac that hung between his legs. Sensing the warmth of my fingers around him, he hesitated, hopeful. I readied my knife. I knew that when I jerked it through the layers of skin, his testicles would fall into my palm as cleanly as the calf’s.

But he caught on too quickly. At the knife flash, he grabbed for his scrotum to protect it and took the blade across his wrist instead. My knife scored deeply, severing tendon and bone, and the blood sprayed over his chest. He bellowed and fell like an ox onto the pavingstones, pressing his mutilated hand between his thighs to stop the bleeding.

The moon was high above the scriptorium, my only witness. He was in a raving fit. From the way the blood was spurting, I knew he would never paint on vellum again. I had to get out fast or he would kill me.

I could take no more. I was done. I must leave the abbey, but I meant to leave by my own power, not be driven out. Within minutes, I gathered a few belongings and was gone.

Avignon
1324
–
1341

Fourteen

B
RACED BY THE STING
of my injuries, I travelled behind a clutch of friars on the night path to Avignon—more men than I had encountered in ten years at the abbey. If they had turned to look, they would have seen a wandering friar with his head cowled and his hands tucked into his scapular. After two leagues, where the friars’ path met the Sorgue once again, we were joined by journeymen and artisans seeking labour in the city. Fate had directed my hand when I maimed the Florentine, for ahead of me were the well-built towers of Avignon, twice as many as when I had left. At cockcrow, I dropped further behind to discard my outer habit, then followed the river downstream past farmers’ fields, past dwellings and small bourgs, until it was tamed into a canal by the cloth-workers.

I entered the outskirts of Avignon just as the bell at Notre-Dame-des-Doms rang out to signal Pentecost, the day of my birth fifteen years earlier. Soon the folk would throng the streets to celebrate the feast day. Here, beside the busy paddlewheels on the rue du Cheval Blanc, where the dyers’ waste spilled into the canal, I recognized the Cheval Blanc with
its ancient sycamore. The tree had been there before the canal was built, before the dyers and their wheels. Underneath it was a squatting beggar, her eyes vacant, her grin unmistakably Conmère’s toothless grin. When I greeted her with affection, offering her the remains of my food, she did not recognize me, but she would not let go of the cheese I gave her or the crust. Her joy was terrifying because it was the joy of greed, not of love.

“Look, I’m Solange!” I bared my thigh to show my birthmark and threw my arms around her.

Only then did she understand who I was. She muttered some words in the old tongue and led me up the stairs to our chamber, which looked unchanged. Someone lay in a heap on the bed, breathing loudly. I banged the shutters open in a spray of dust to let in the odour of the dye vats and the canal.

The bed groaned. “Go away. It is too early.”

“The bells have rung for prime.”

“What do I care for bells?”

A woman the same age as Maman when I had last seen her and just as brazenly dressed. When I told Perrette—for this was the harlot’s name—that I was Conmère’s granddaughter and that I had walked from Clairefontaine abbey, she was up, cursing, and I was in the bed with a cool compress on each foot. My courage drained and I felt the pain caused by the Florentine’s rough treatment. I slept all day, ate well, and slept again with my back to Perrette, soothed by the familiar creaking of the paddlewheel.

In the morning, Conmère rustled in the corner with her herbs and ointments, talking to herself. Perrette held out a handful of small coins, but Conmère went down the stairs without them.

“She’ll get bread at the Pope’s almonry,” Perrette said. “We won’t see her again until dark.”

“What happened to her?”

“She lost her daughter and her daughter’s child on the same day. Over the years her wisdom has turned simple.”

“That must be why she never searched for me.”

“This is your bed now, the only thing of value in the chamber.”

“I have no need of such a large bed.” I ran my hands across the wooden table to locate the childish letters I had carved,
Le Blanc
. My name, though I had not thought of it for years. “I will take this table instead, for it was also my mother’s. This is my métier.” I unrolled my knife, quill, and ink-horn, but she waved them off.

“The clerics need courtesans more than scribes.”

I showed her the bundle of Dante quires I had carried from Clairefontaine. “Where can I find a bookbinder?”

“North of the butchers, near the tanners. Take this for food.” She tossed me a coin.

I looked at the denier. “How much should I get for this?”

“Enough for a meal. Go to the rue de l’Épicerie near Saint Pierre. I suppose you remember where that is?”

“If not I’ll ask.”

She gave me a gat-toothed smile. “Cover your hair. And stay away for a few hours. I have a visitor coming.”

As I crossed the plank over the canal, she stuck her head out of the casement to yell at a boy, who withdrew his purple arms from a dyer’s vat. I walked north along the rue du Cheval Blanc, following the canal until it flowed into the moat around the wall. Once I was through the southeast gate and inside the city wall, I found people fighting for direction, no one willing to give way. For every woman wearing pattens to protect her shoes, I saw a score of men in colourful garments. Merchants or clerics? I could not tell the difference.

The buildings were blackened with smoke and unclean commerce, and the jutting overhangs cut out the sun. Past the turning, the street broadened to reveal newer structures faced in stone. Men in livery guarded a courtyard, from which clerics emerged, talking loud, stiff, schoolbook Latin. This was the first time I had seen a cardinal other than in a book of hours. The street narrowed and changed
again. Dogs, pigs, men—all moved too swiftly and made too much racket. I rounded the corner to be hit with a horrid stench, and pinched my nostrils. I spotted the youth with purple arms leaning against a wall, a smile on his face.

“Did Perrette ask you to follow me?”