Muse (30 page)

My lips neared his, then withdrew. “I still have some power over you.”

“And I over you.”

His hand ran along my inner thigh, reclaiming territory ravaged by his foe. No one had made such a claim as his upon my flesh. Even when I had been with Clement, I kept my inwardness sacred to Francesco. Beneath my fingers, as I undid his points, his leg muscles tensed. He had been celibate too long and I had learnt a thing or two about pleasing men since I had last lain with him. I stripped off his hose to caress the belly of each thigh, and when he was naked to my eyes, I clothed him with my hips. He rolled me over, his hands supporting my back, then he rose up and entered in sweet plunging glory.

After we had both surrendered equally, we lay on our backs, taking in great greedy gulps of one another’s air. Now that his eyes had fallen closed, I felt for my miséricorde and snipped some of his dark hair—a souvenir that might prove useful, like the angel Gabriel’s feather that the Virgin plucked during the Annunciation. After a while, he began to stir. His palm swept the floor as he groped for his hose in the daze of a man whom pleasure has taken unawares. Celibacy had loosened its grip upon him. He was now easy about the eyes and would be easier in his poetry, too, not so tightly bound in figures. I wrested his gown from beneath my spine and held it out to him, the nap of the velvet so crushed that it might never spring upright again. There was nothing left to say. Only the key spoke—two revolutions in the lock, a
clank
, a push—and he was gone.

Lust, enflamed by intimacy, had triumphed over Francesco’s resolutions and I conceived on that second Sunday of Lent in the year 1343. The moon was new, her most fertile phase. I gave Francesco a gift of joy and took from him what he could never reclaim—another child to replace my son. However, when I searched for the shank of his hair, it was missing. Either the draught had blown it into the scraps and threads that the scribes had dropped on the tiles, or Francesco himself had stolen it.

Thirty-seven

I
RODE IN PROCESSIONS
behind Clement VI, sat at his left in tournaments, and rinsed my fingers in his silver bowl. I plucked off the hood of my falcon to send him soaring through the air. What did I care if the Avignonnaises whispered behind gloved hands? Even when Laura was amongst them, I did not wish to change my state for theirs. I had pricked my hand and dropped the blood into spring water. The drops floated, telling me that I was carrying a daughter.

Now I followed Clement’s canopy through the porte des Infirmières towards Châteauneuf-du-Pape, my hair erected to such a height that it rivalled the Pope’s three-crowned tiara with its cross. The people lining the way had waited for hours to see us. The more outrageous my surcot, the more the folds of rich cloth rode up around my belly, the more they loved me. I kept to my horse in the beating sun until we made our first night’s stop at the bastide de Périgord. In the morning, our cavalcade continued to the Pope’s summer palace on the right bank of the Ouvèze, having collected a Florentine ambassador who called Clement
Notre Seigneur
and asked questions when he was least wanted. I guarded my
tongue around him, for he was a parasite who wrote things down and conveyed them to his countrymen.

After a week at Châteauneuf-du-Pape, we rode to the bastide de Gentilly at the invitation of Cardinal Ceccano for the dedication of his new chapel to Saint Martial, Clement’s favourite saint. We were met by sixteen cardinals, plus counts, bishops, damoiseaux, captains, chevaliers, down the line to écuyers wearing spring livery branded with both Ceccano’s magpie and Clement’s rose. Half the cardinals were related to the Pope. Even musicians could be bought and sold, for one of Francesco’s friends was leading a motet sung by the Pope’s young nephews, future bishops with runny noses. In the audience chamber, I watched the seigneurs of both land and church filling their cups at a fountain spewing five colours of wine, from deep grenache to the clearest Saint Pourçain. A tenor began to sing from behind a screen. A woman’s voice joined in, like oil anointing skin. They clung together, calling and answering, rising and falling in a suggestive rhythm.

Two noblemen strode across the hall, their silver belt tongues slapping their thighs. They paused near me, not bothering to hide their scrutiny. “What a quantity of gold and ermine is loaded on her person,” the shorter said, in a Paris accent. “Surely Avignon noblewomen do not bare their breasts so boldly?”

“That is one of the city’s spectacular harlots,” his companion replied. “The Countess of Turenne. The Pope finally got himself a courtesan who can read and write. She is as rich as Crœsus from selling fiefs, the few the Pope did not give to his family.”

“How much power does she wield?”

“More than most cardinals. Watch her work the Pope. To see her fawn, you would almost think she cared for him.”

I spun towards the welcome sight of Guido in his palace notary’s gown, pushing his beaker beneath the fountain’s spouts, one after another, until he had collected all five wines. I embraced him
discreetly, then drank some of the pinkish fluid in his cup. “If you can tolerate this mixture, Guido, you will make a good archbishop. What news do you have of the Petrarchs?”

“Gherardo walked eighty miles south to Montrieux, where he has found asylum.”

“In the monastery? An odd place to wash up, but he will be calmer there. Has Francesco taken Giovanni to Florence?”

“Not yet. He’s not been able to shake free of Colonna. Each time I see you, Solange, your garments fit tighter. I suppose your strutting makes the Pope feel virile, but you are also provoking the Italians. It irritates them to pay you homage. Where will it lead? Are you sure you know?”

“You tell me, Guido. You are Italian. What does Annibal Ceccano intend by all this overarching splendour? He bullies the Pope to return to Rome, yet has built three châteaux here himself. Everyone seeks Clement’s favour, even those who attend me in the guise of friendship.”

“Did you know Francesco refused to compose a tribute for this banquet? Instead, he has shut himself up at Fontaine-de-Vaucluse to write tirades about the court’s wickedness. Sonnets, I think.”

I seized his arm. “Did you bring them with you?”

“Why would I?” He shrugged. “He is also writing eclogues about the Pope milking his flock to glut his treasury and anonymous letters in which he calls you Semiramis, the sultan’s consort, whose stallion has hooves of gold.”

I suppose the bargain was a fair one—furious new writings in exchange for the infant I had taken from Francesco without his knowledge. But
hooves of gold?
“When you next write, tell him I am with child by the Pope. Let us see what he can make of that.”

“So that is why …” He gestured at my belly. “You are dancing at knifepoint, Solange. What if the Pope objects?”

I asked myself the same question as a knight escorted me into the banquet hall, where I took my place at the Pope’s left. Clement had not yet noticed my condition, but if Guido had observed that my garments
were snug, so might others. Clement and I cleansed our fingers with rosewater and ate generously of the roast meats, only to discover there would be two more courses. In the first intermezzo, the Pope was given a battle-horse worth four hundred florins. In the second intermezzo, he received a sapphire ring and one of topaz. My clothing shrank course by course, until, after nine flights of dishes, divided into threes by intermezzos, the chef quickstepped out with his thirty cooks in time to our handclaps.

When this debauchery of ear, eye, and stomach was over, Cardinal Ceccano escorted us to a gallery with a view of the meadow. Ceccano’s knights showed us their prowess in close combat and youths sparred with long-swords, while marriageable young women paraded in their heraldic sleeves. Ceccano leaned over the Pope’s shoulder, rounding his back to share a lewd observation, although I was within hearing. I straightened, spreading my fingers boldly across my thickening belly. Catching on, Ceccano swerved his eyes from me to the Pope and back to me again, attempting to stir up enmity between us.

“Petrarch was right,” said Ceccano. “This courtesan has cast a spell of uxoriousness that keeps you besotted in your Babylon.”

“Indeed she has.” Clement’s face went soft, no doubt sizing up my roundness, counting the months, recalling the times I had come to his bedchamber of my own volition. He gestured towards my fecund belly, raising his voice for others to hear. “See how I send out shoots in spring? In this year of the eclipse, this is proof that the Pope is well rooted in the soil of Avignon.”

He kissed me full upon the lips, as he did when appointing a cardinal, then removed his sapphire ring to place it on my finger, a deliberate insult to his host, who had just presented it to him. This was so remarkable a show that the French cardinals stomped their heels, drumming their approval.

“Now, Ceccano, listen to your pope. Your palace is fine, but mine shall be finer. I shall turn Avignon into Nova Roma, a queen armed
mightily against her foes. She will have a new jewel in her tiara, a magnificent palace with an audience chamber of such surpassing size and luxury that no man will ever again question whether the Pope will remain in Avignon.”

Annibal Ceccano was simmering. “For my next entertainment, Your Holiness”—he pointed across the meadow to a tableau that was assembling—“I have invited the masters of your city guilds to attend the evening’s revels. As a mark of courtesy, I have erected a bridge across the Sorgue to shorten their way.”

We watched as the guild-masters dismounted, adjusted the hang of their festival robes, and manœuvred into their proper rank and order. When the bridge was overburdened with human flesh—two dozen guild-masters bowing towards the Holy Father—it let out a thunder-crack and gave way. The bridge twisted sideways, broke into two, and dumped the worthy burghers in the river. This was no bridge of merit made from seasoned wood, but a sham—a manifest folly that Ceccano had built expressly to deceive and he laughed coarsely while the victims paddled like dogs to the bank. They had come by no harm, yet I felt for their damaged pride and ruined linen, since it was an unkind way to make sport. Fattened by the banquet, despoilt and fawned over, Clement was also laughing, though more weakly than his host.

But then he stopped. Abruptly, his hand lifted and fell, signalling the termination of the revels. Silence radiated outwards from his throne: first the cardinals stilled, then the bishops, then the musicians, then the young noblewomen and the youths, who sheathed their nimble swords with scarcely any clatter. The bastide, even the birds above it, fell ominously silent, for when the Pope rested, so must all his vassals.

I was shown to a bedchamber decorated with sinister magpies and delicate clementine roses. A sickening beat sounded on a tabor as Clement entered like a bridegroom in an escort of cardinals and lackeys. Thankfully, Clement had as little stomach for this jockeying as I did. His palm flipped to dismiss the men. The servants removed my
stiff outer garment and we were left to share a bed but little else, for we were too ill with ceremony for more.

At dawn, a heavy fist attacked the door. Nicolas de Besse leapt from his pallet beside our bed, shot open the bolt, and Hugues Roger banged in, announcing, “A body has washed up against the weir.”

Clement threw his legs over the side of the bed and dropped his head between his knees. “Not one of my cardinals?”

“A guild-master who pitched into the river when the bridge collapsed. He became entangled in his heavy robes and drowned.” Hugues Roger marched around the great chamber, cutting the edges of his turns sharply. “The guild-masters are blaming the Pope. The cursed Italians have tricked you into falling out with your own confraternities.”

I rose from the bed. “Your Holiness, you need those guilds to construct your palace.”

Hugues Roger halted in front of his brother. “This is well said. If they band against you, they will strangle the construction of the new wings.”

I said, “Give all the masters a length of fine cloth to replace their spoilt robes, along with some furs above their station for their wives.”

“That may salve their humiliation, but not mine.” Clement lifted his head. “I have been caught in the snare of my own vanity. Where is the corpse?”

“Our Limousin knights have dragged him to a borie. After he is stripped of his clothing, he will be buried like a serf.”

“No,” said Clement. “Tell the knights to claim his body honourably. The man must be paid every homage, the best wax candles, the whitest shroud. Not in Avignon, where too much notice might incite rebellion, but in Ceccano’s new chapel, where this misadventure belongs. Give Ceccano my instructions, then hasten to the widow to tell her yourself, most gently. Do not bribe her, Hugues, but with charm and plain speaking, do all that can be accomplished. I will ride to the city in penance. Arrange for thirteen paupers to be at the eastern gate, so I can kneel to wash their feet before I enter.”

The brothers clasped hands—one ebony, the other ivory. Then Hugues Roger strode out, as full of purpose as his brother. Clement called for his steward to dress him and I withdrew into the antechamber, where all my gluttony came up into a pail a servant held for me—one course after another, until all nine had made an appearance. The girl whisked away the pail before the smell of it made me retch up my very guts.

Dressed in a simple priest’s cassock, Clement mounted his white mule to ride the straightest route to Avignon, with as many dignitaries as could be persuaded to follow him. There was no upholstered barge with canopy to glorify our progress. As we neared the city wall, we learnt that the guild-masters had passed this way earlier, crest-fallen, wet, and in ill humour.

People were congregating outside the porte des Infirmières, their mood hostile, their behaviour truculent. Whipped into a sense of general injustice, they had come to witness the Pope’s penitential return. Someone pushed an ass in front of the Pope with a sign saying,
Make me a cardinal too
. Troublemakers pelted us with petitions wrapped around rocks, then with rocks alone, and then anything hard within arm’s reach. When the Pope’s guards fell behind, a prankster smacked the white mule on the rump, causing it to bray, but Clement kept his seat, and once the folk were close enough to see his face, as dusty and streaked with sweat as theirs, they let him pass without harm.