Muse (25 page)

“Go forwards,” he said, impressed by the fine script, though he was holding the document upside down.

My litter stalled, was set down once more, then hoisted up again, as the people eddied and swirled into the courtyard. My stomach was objecting to all the ups and downs and sidestepping. Around me, I heard Italian spoken. Lawyers, goldsmiths, and moneychangers—who could afford zonas and bright, saturated dyes—were taking their places beneath the three keys of Avignon.

As we crept along the north side, I heard Provençal. The noble families were entering the shady pavilions beneath their flying baldachins, the heraldry resplendent: roses, chevrons, besants d’ors, rampant lions, eagles. In a mob of noblewomen in a viewing stand, I saw a dark head wearing an archaic crown of laurel, my first glimpse of Francesco since he had been summoned back to Avignon. He was swathed in a gown of regal velvet—without doubt, the one King Robert had given him for his coronation in Rome. As he bowed to accept the congratulations of the Avignonnaises, I saw the flutter of the de Sade banner and witnessed the stiff neck of Laura de Sade bend to acknowledge his elevation to poet laureate. Her eyes, the courtly grey so impossible to capture in verse, welcomed the honoured poet to her sphere. Soon all of Avignon would know the very hour and day that Laura forgave the poet Petrarch for begetting a son on a common woman.

I sank back into the litter to hide my face as I was shouldered past. We came to a halt at the largest pavilion. Here floated the banners of the Pope’s kinfolk and allies, forty strong, that trumpeted his blood lineage against opposing claims by Italian cardinals who would have returned the papacy to Rome. A sergeant-at-arms opened the litter door. This time, the Pope’s azure band spoke for me, because I had paid to have his coat of arms sewn upon my wide sleeves and sweeping hem.

“The Pope’s niece?” The sergeant did not wait for me to answer. “Up there with the others!”

I struggled on foot towards the platform of richly ornamented women. All the seats had been taken, so I stood in the cruel sun without a sheltering canopy while the rank and file of papal functionaries
marched past, followed by squires and knights in battle armour, then the city marshal, the camerlengo, and the grand penitentiary with his ferula. Visible at the rear of the procession was a plush barge accompanied by seventeen cardinals balancing their red hats on spiral poles. These were the members of the Sacred College, the grand seigneurs of Christianity, only a fistful of Italians amongst a score of French.

But whoever was in the palanquin, it was certainly not the new Pope, Pierre Roger, for he was riding a white mule led by the dukes of Normandy and Burgundy. The Pope was escorted to Saint Peter’s chair, the high seneschal of Provence emerged from the barge to kiss the Pope’s slipper, and the people roared their approval of this pageant. One ritual speech followed another until the head of the conclave, the Gascon Raymond Guillaume des Farges, held up the gold tiara embedded with a massive carbuncle. He lowered the crown upon the Holy Father’s head and arranged the lappets on his neck.

Having stood through all these Latin tributes in the heat, I was perspiring. The dukes and dauphins were kissing the new Fisherman’s ring. After them would file viscounts, noblemen, and knights, and those who defied the sumptuary laws to pass as such, each paying homage with the hand-kiss, the baisemain. I had now had my fill of seigneurs and sovereign princes with their heraldry and reeking perfume. Once they had moved forwards, I must fall in behind to get to the Pope before the men of arts. I wanted to stay well ahead of Francesco so he would not see me.

My temples ached and my elaborate robe was sticking to my skin. The only woman in the line of noble vassals, I progressed in increments towards Saint Peter’s chair, until at last the Pope loomed on the dais, smiling genially as if we were kindred spirits in our outsized costumes. He looked like a Limousin farmer, with a broad forehead and jaw planted with a crop of stubble. Rattled by the heat, I lurched towards him, fell heavily on my knees on the dais, and dropped my petition in his lap. Immediately, some functionary’s arm stretched out to toss it into a basket
with a multitude of others. I tried to steady myself by staring at the Pope, but the sun was in my eyes and everything had shunted out of kilter. Was the Pope peering at me, or was I peering at him?

He held out his gloved hand so I could kiss the colossal ring. “My dear, there is no need to kiss my feet. Although I am God on earth, I am a mere servant to beauty.”

The cardinals, archbishops, and bishops laughed uneasily and the Pope smiled an elongated, lopsided smile. As my lips neared the Fisherman’s ring, a blinding ray of sun threaded through his tiara, skewered the red carbuncle, and stabbed my eyes. The tiara split into three, each crowning a separate head. The middle spoke Provençal, the left Italian, and the right Latin, all striving to be heard over the others. Even more disturbing, the voices were all mine. I was babbling nonsense, the worst kind of prophetic nonsense about God crowning the Pope with Pentecostal flames. How long did I talk? I did not know—long enough to irritate the men lined up behind me, but at least I had not spoken in the old tongue. A petition whistled past my ear. Another grazed the Pope’s cheek, flung by one of the disgruntled friars marooned behind the men of arts.

The Pope lifted his hand, his fingers tight as soldiers, to calm the multitude. “This prophet has spoken fair. We have witnessed God’s fire, the tongues of flame that blessed the apostles at the first Pentecost. My predecessor did not know how to be pope, but you will find me overflowing with generosity. I have decided to be called Clement, the sixth pope of that name, and will be full of clemency towards my people.” The applause rose, then subsided. “No man who seeks a favour will leave my city empty-handed as long as he observes the rule of law!”

The cardinals knelt hastily in vassalage, the dignitaries scrambled to make obeisance, and Francesco was borne forwards in a wave of literati as eager as the sweaty friars to glimpse the Pope and his new prophet. Francesco could see me kneeling at the Pope’s feet and he seemed agitated, as if recalling his warning that one day my riddling tongue might
be torn out in the Pope’s dungeon. I tried to stand, but my legs were too weak to hold my weight, and the Pope signalled the Limousin guards to remove me from the dais. As they bore me off, I heard some of the cardinals seizing upon my vision of divine flames as a providential sign, and as the guards carried me past the French allies, I heard the opinion amplified into an anthem of praise for their new pope.

Thirty-two

I
WOKE IN A
mute black space. Perhaps a torture chamber. Rolling on my side punished me with a seasick belly and a stab of pain behind my eyes. I felt for my miséricorde and found it still hidden in my belt, where I had ready access to it. A gaunt man drew the curtains that hemmed me in. So I was in a bed. He introduced himself: Gasbert des Sept-Fontaines, a médecin sent by the Pope. The chamber was small but well furnished, with a single window, too small to climb through, and a single door, blocked by two of the Pope’s elite guards. A jail, then. But a comfortable one.

My mouth tasted metallic. “Is His Holiness displeased with me?”

Sept-Fontaines widened his eyes. “Why would he be? Yesterday you brought the nobles to their feet, the cardinals to their knees, and spoke three languages more fluently than his brother speaks his native tongue. Like a wise sibyl, you were enigmatic. Each man has taken what he wished from it. The French are proclaiming that your prophecy legitimizes Clement VI’s right to the throne and the Italians are spitting bile because it encourages the Holy Father to reside here instead of Rome.”

Sept-Fontaines bled me, funnelled tasteless fluids down my throat, and spooned in jellied pap, talking all the while. From him, I learnt that two hundred casks of wine had been drunk at the coronation banquet. The Pope’s guests had devoured a hundred cattle, a thousand sheep, five hundred pints of red sauce and five hundred of green, and finished off with fifty thousand tarts. I had missed it all and so had this médecin, who had drawn the short straw of tending to me.

“Am I in the Dominican friary?”

“In the Pope’s palace, at the base of the tour de l’Étude. The Pope’s Limousin guards carried you themselves. Mary of Egypt could not have been more tenderly transported.”

Hours later, my laboured sleep was broken by two women jabbering in the same accent as the guards. An old voice, brittle and unpleasant, and a soft, youthful one. I peeked at robes trimmed in ermine and sable, outlawed to all but members of the court. The clementine roses on their sleeves were red, unlike mine, which were white. How could I have made such a mistake? I shut my eyelids and pretended to be asleep.

“Aliénor, look at that hair,” said the younger woman. “As abundant and shiny as a chestnut. Who can she be?”

Aliénor rustled off my blanket to finger my robe. “This is English wool, but she looks more like a city harlot. She should be taken to the repenties of the Magdalene and confined there.”

“Could she be the woman rumoured to be Francesco Petrarch’s sister? Observe how strange and tranquil her face is. Do you suppose she is having a vision?”

“Let us find out. Visionaries do not bleed.”

As a needle pierced my toe, I breathed into my back, willing myself to take the pain. I concentrated on the mattress, which was tufted and springy. Feathers, not horsehair. What were they doing now? Staring at my foot?

“No blood,” the younger said.

Gasbert des Sept-Fontaines entered, followed by shuffling servants and the aroma of roast game. “What is this—a conclave? Leave us, for the Pope has sent a haunch of venison from his own table to enrich her blood.” The women swept out. “You may open your eyes. The jackals have gone.”

“Are they the Pope’s kinfolk?”

“A sister and a niece, although many of the palace women called kin are really courtesans. As you will learn, beds in the palace are more for entertaining than for sleeping. Only the Pope seems to know who is blood and who is water.”

Two days after the feast of Saint Jean, the servants took my garments, and returned them cleaned and brushed. Just as they had finished putting the final layer of clothing on me, a brutal knock sounded—the captain of the palace to collect me, Aigrefeuille by name, his armour studded with three stars. Had I been gowned for public show or for the pillory? The captain escorted me into the labyrinth of corridors, up staircases, and through long halls linked by massive towers. In every chamber stood hostiarii—guards, stewards, doorkeepers, ushers—in papal livery. We emerged in an antechamber weighed down by late-day gloom, where Pope Clement sat in the only chair amongst a cadre of his officers, their faces grim and sceptical. An inquisition, then.

A fur-lined cloak appeared with an old dignitary buried inside. The camerlengo, I guessed, from the chain that snaked around his neck. His voice was formal, pitched to the corners of the chamber, where men with dark faces and darker clothing lurked. “You are familiar with Francesco Petrarch?”

What did this mean? I did not rush to answer.

He spoke louder. “Are you a member of his family?”

Beside me, the captain muttered, “Is he blind? Can that hair grow on an Italian head?”

The camerlengo persisted for the Pope’s benefit, since he was observing me attentively. “I ask you again, are you Petrarch’s sister?” His hand went up, down, right, like a lazy man crossing himself.

I took one breath, another. “I am not.”

“So we surmised.” He scored his point in the air.

“But she
is
clairvoyante,” said the Pope. “That is no deception.”

The camerlengo bowed. “Your Holiness, her vision at your coronation is not in doubt. It is God’s choice of instrument we question. Why such a woman?”

The captain spoke, impatient to get on with it. “You have been seen at Petrarch’s side in the city.”

“Carrying his quills and parchment, yes. I was his copyist for a time.” At the vulgar laughter from the rougher men, I looked at the Pope, appealing to his gallantry. “Is that an offence in Avignon?”

“There is no charge against you,” the Pope said, his eyes leaping from man to man. “Did any one of you say otherwise?”

Several of the Pope’s officers looked down. Whatever they knew—and I feared the worst—they were reluctant to air it in front of Clement VI.

Another man resumed the interrogation. From his accent, coat of arms, and new marshal’s cloak, I knew the speaker to be Hugues Roger, the Pope’s brother. His jaw wide, his hair like wind-blown straw, he had the same coarse features as the Pope but none of the Pope’s courtesy. “Cardinal Colonna recalled Petrarch from Rome. What was the reason?”

“So he could attend Pope Clement’s coronation, I presume,” I said. “I have not spoken to him since his return.”

“Do not dodge! How do the Italians intend to use Petrarch? What is his rôle as poet laureate? Surely you can speculate on that.”

“Give her time, Hugues.” The Pope rose from his chair. “My brother means, should we be wary of Petrarch, my dear?”