The Cellars of Notre Dame

by Barbara Frale

  Picquigny bowed deeply, then backed away to disappear into the crowd of dignitaries. Monsignor Matifort, the bishop of Paris, was an athletic man with a strong-willed face and a wrestler’s physique that not even his pious cassocks could hide completely. He had a proud character that matched his appearance perfectly; when it became clear to him that the king had not ordered the release of Monsignor Saisset, he flushed with indignation. It could not have been easy for him to moderate words in such circumstances. The arrogance of Philip IV had exceeded every limit that day; if God forgives everything, always, then someone in the world must take the responsibility for teaching him a lesson.

  “Majesty, the arrest of a prelate is sacrilege,” he said in a tone of blatant condemnation. “The bishop of Pamiers is an ecclesiastical, and he is not subject to secular power. You must release him, now! In the interest of your kingdom!”

  The queen rewarded Matifort with a warm glance of approval, whereas Philip IV’s expression hardened in a way that promised war. Bad blood had ever flowed between the king and Simon Matifort and the truth was that no one at court was overly fond of that gladiator who wore a cassock over his cuirass; he was a plain-speaking priest with a who was all too hasty in his ways. French, certainly; but he did not love his homeland sufficiently. There was also talk of certain areas of shadow in his existence, and of secrets incompatible with the sacred dignity of a man of the cloth.

  The Chancellor, Pierre Flotte, did not dare say it aloud, but he suspected that Matifort himself might be the evildoer who lurked like a snake in the tunnels beneath Notre-Dame, from whence he emerged to infest Paris under the infamous name of Lanius. As a bishop, Matifort had exclusive jurisdiction over the episcopal quarter, and he knew the great cathedral like the back of his hand, right down to the smallest alcove; who better than him, then?

  Flotte would have been most happy to see His Majesty give the man an earful, but prudence led him to intervene to calm the waters; before perhaps the king opened his mouth and France had two members of the high clergy in jail instead of just one.

  “Monsignor Matifort,” said Pierre Flotte calmly, “we respect your spiritual authority but please, do not involve yourself in political matters! If we allow a man who tries to set an entire province of the kingdom against its king go unpunished, France will be ruined. Other vassals will embrace the same cause, and will take advantage of the revolt to take up arms. It will be civil war.”

  “You only think of politics!” protested Matifort. “Don’t you realize the damage the matter could do to the people? The pope will be forced to react, because he cannot tolerate such grave an abuse against the immunities of the Church. The archbishop of Reims has already launched an interdict on France, and if by chance Boniface confirms it, then there will be no more marriages or baptisms in this kingdom. People will die without having received the last rites, the bodies of the dead will no longer be buried in consecrated ground.”

  A nervous buzz suddenly filled the room. No one wanted to give up the comfort of the sacraments – it would mean finding themselves naked and defenceless beneath the claws of the devil.

  The hand in which Philip IV held the sceptre gave a hint of movement – a minimal, almost imperceptible gesture, with which he announced that he would speak.

  “Bernard Saisset is an enemy of our kingdom,” he stated, “and will therefore remain in prison. If Boniface wishes to oppose our sacred authority, which comes from above, then he will find France and Navarre ready to face him.”

  An agitated whisper snaked through the room, but it died out almost immediately: the queen too had raised the arm in which she held the sceptre. Not a tiny gesture like that of her husband, but an emphatic and striking one.

  “Navarre is a Catholic kingdom devoted to the Holy Roman Church,” she said aloud, slowly. “Therefore we disapprove of the action committed against the person of Monsignor Bernard Saisset. We will refuse to subscribe to any act which is detrimental to the sacred authority of the supreme Roman pontiff.”

  The murmuring suddenly became chaotic and uncontrollable. Philip IV turned his icy eyes upon her

  “How dare you say that?” he asked softly, resentfully. “You are my wife, you owe me obedience!”

  Joan of Navarre looked at him in turn, her eyes, as black and shiny as obsidian.

  “Never dare to speak in my name again,” she said firmly. “I am the head of a sovereign state, monarch by the grace of God. And I have no fear of you!”

  The sky above Paris had taken on an even more gloomy shade, now. Like in the lands of the far north, where winter never ends.

  *

  In the glow that drenched the still-deserted streets with the pink light of the early hours of the morning, two furtive figures clad in expensive velvet entered Notre-Dame from a side door, with the connivance of the canons, to whom they had given a hefty donation. The dialogue that was to take place shortly thereafter, once the decided-upon place was reached, required the utmost discretion.

  “The answer to my dilemma lies here, Madame. Beneath Notre-Dame!”

  Small, bony and wiry, the man who had spoken, was a jurist player of proven talent. His name was Guillaume de Nogaret, and for some time he had been employed for occasional assignments at the Chancellery of France. Professional and unfailing in his trade, they said, he was held in high esteem by Chancellor Pierre Flotte who considered him one of the greatest experts of the kingdom in the field of ancient Roman law; for that reason alone queen Joan had allowed herself to be persuaded to follow him to the cathedral where Nogaret swore he had something very important to show her. He seemed intimidated by her person, and not simply because she was the consort of the monarch. The Rose of the Pyrenees, they called her, because of her innate elegance. Taller than him, and slender, Joan had gathered her fiery copper hair under gauzy transparent veils which swayed with the slightest movement of the air; she had all the grace of a brightly-coloured exotic butterfly, and like a butterfly seemed ephemeral and delicate.

  “Nogaret, it was not easy to meet you here without arousing suspicion. I hope you will explain to me why you insisted upon it!” She had been forced to invent a thousand excuses to get away from the Louvre in complete privacy, taking with her only her first lady-in-waiting.

  The lawyer took a deep breath, like someone embarking on the telling of a long story.

  “Your husband the king has given me a secret assignment, Madame. A question of the utmost delicacy. Do you remember Arnaldo da Villanova? The famous scientist they call the Catalan?”

  “Certainly,” she said confidently. “Three years ago he came here to Paris. He taught at the university. He conducted some confidential studies for the Crown as well. But he was denounced for sacrilege and put in prison. Then he obtained a pardon and left France, and there was no more news of him.”

  “Not quite, Madame. Arnaldo da Villanova had me brought to him when he was under arrest. I knew him very well because we were colleagues at the University of Montpellier: I taught law, he taught medicine. He explained the situation to me and I immediately realized that the old man was the victim of a plot against him. I felt that undertaking a doctrinal dispute would be pointless, so I advised him to appeal to the pope: who better to decide in matters of faith than the supreme Roman pontiff? Boniface asked for the proof against Arnaldo to be sent to him, then declared him innocent and called him to the Vatican, where he now works as his personal physician.”

  “I understand the task you have been given, Nogaret. You must resolve a judicial affair which, at least here in France, remains unresolved. But why would you talk to me of the Catalan?”

  “The king wants Arnaldo acquitted, Madame. Your husband wants him back here in Paris so that the old man can resume the experiments he was conducting before his arrest: it seems to be of vital importance, even if His Majesty has given me no details. I spent weeks examining the papers that concern him. There is something very strange in them.”

  “What did you find, Nogaret?”

/>   “The case against him is full of inconsistencies and flaws, but one thing struck me more than anything else. During the interrogation, Arnaldo uttered a sentence. A threat, perhaps. Or a prophecy.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Chilling words, my lady. ‘From the tunnels of Notre-Dame, the Antichrist will invade the earth’.”

  “My God! And what did he mean by it?”

  “I have asked myself the same question. Arnaldo was speaking symbolically, of course. He was trying to indicate a tremendous danger the exact name of which he did not dare to pronounce.”

  “For what reason?”

  “The most banal, Madame: fear. I am convinced that the old man had discovered something extremely grave.”

  Suddenly, the queen was seized by a memory. Her eyes stared blindly into space before her.

  “Nogaret, perhaps I know what the Catalan was referring to.”

  “What was it, my lady?”

  “I know little of Arnaldo, but I do remember one regrettable fact. Shortly before the old man was arrested, there was a bitter disagreement between him and Henri de Mondeville.”

  “The royal surgeon?”

  “Yes, Nogaret, him.”

  “He seems to be a good doctor. Why did he quarrel with the Catalan?”

  “It happened on the day Arnaldo examined all the members of the royal family. He found them in good health, except for little Robert.”

  “What was the matter with the young prince?”

  “According to Mondeville, nothing. But Arnaldo da Villanova insisted that the child’s heart was not functioning properly and that he suffered from heart failure. He proposed a cure.”

  “And Mondeville didn’t agree?”

  “He did not. According to him, the cure was too dangerous – so dangerous that it risked killing the child. Arnaldo accused Mondeville of superficiality and told him that he was simply a surgeon, not a physiologist. He knew nothing about how the human body reacts when stimulated with the medicinal substances that God has spread throughout nature in the plant and mineral world. Mondeville then lost control and began accusing the old man of being one of those charlatans who peddle strange concoctions and magic amulets. And to reinforce his accusations, he mentioned a certain lesson that the Catalan had given in his lecture hall in Paris. Arnaldo’s theories had caused a sensation.”

  “What theories?”

  Joan of Navarre shook her head slightly. “The problem was a prediction he had made. After studying the course of the stars, Arnaldo said that a horrendous calamity was going to strike France. He spoke of deserted cities inhabited only by dogs and wild beasts in search of carrion to devour. He described bodies piled up in the churches, so high that they reached the ceiling. The dead lying everywhere, but unburied because there would not be a living soul to bury them.”

  Guillaume de Nogaret stared at her in astonishment.

  “Madame, you are describing the scenario of a terrible epidemic. The book of the Apocalypse…”

  And when the Lamb had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and beheld a pale horse: and his name that sat upon it was Death, and Hell followed after him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to exterminate with the sword, and with hunger, and with plague, and with the beasts of the earth.

  The queen took his hands.

  “Nogaret, are you well?” Suddenly he was deadly pale, and she was afraid that he might collapse to the ground at any moment.

  “Yes, my lady. But I cannot hide the fact that the scenario is an extremely alarming one.”

  “Can I help you in any way? I will do everything in my power.”

  “I have reason to suspect that Arnaldo buried here the evidence of what he had discovered. What safer hiding place could there be? There is a maze of tunnels that winds under the cathedral of Paris and I have to find out how to get into them, my lady. If I can get down there, I can understand exactly what the Catalan was working on. I assure you that Arnaldo is no heretic, and I do not believe that he has truly committed impiety or sacrilege. I want him to be fully pardoned and also compensated for the disgrace he had to suffer. The rector of the Sorbonne will have to invite him personally. This will bring him back to France, as His Majesty wishes. He is the only one who can save our country.”

  “Certainly, Nogaret. It is a marvellous strategy. And it would be even better if he were offered a professorship at our prestigious university. Perhaps he would agree to return to Paris.”

  “But I have come to a dead end, Madame! I have to get down there. Without finding what the Catalan has hidden, I will not be able to prove his innocence, nor will I be able to stop those who want the ruin of France!”

  The queen instinctively touched her cheek. She was burning with tension as if with a fever. Meanwhile, the lawyer pointed to a precise point on the stone wall.

  “Do you see these two capital letters, Madame? A and N. I believe that is a sign. That is why I was so bold as to insist on bringing you here. Somewhere, in the recesses of this tower, the access to the crypts must be hidden. I am not referring to those we already know, of course. There exist passages unknown even to the canons of the cathedral. Hidden places used for who knows what purposes. If you could only take possession of the plans with which this sanctuary was built, I am sure that I can find them. And once I get down there, I will also know what danger threatens my country and my king.”

  “I’m sorry Nogaret but I have never heard of any maps of the tunnels beneath Notre-Dame. Why don’t you speak with the bishop of Paris? The cathedral falls under his jurisdiction.”

  “Alas, Madame! Neither does he know anything about it.”

  “Then perhaps you should ask my husband, Nogaret.”

  “I tried, Madame. His Majesty told me that no plans exist – and he was so annoyed by my request that I did not dare to press the matter further. You understand, though, that those plans must be somewhere! The plans of a church are always preserved with care. They are fundamental if restoration work is necessary.”

  “Your comment is logical, Nogaret. But if the king says they do not exist…”

  The lawyer’s face took on a resolute air.

  “I know not the reason, but perhaps His Majesty doesn’t us to know about their existence. I went through every document in the Chancellery without finding anything. I suspect that the plans are to be found together with the most sensitive documents of the kingdom, in the Louvre. Your husband keeps them in a secret cabinet embedded in the frame of his bed. You could check for me, Madame, since you have free access to those private chambers…”

  It seemed obvious to him that the queen must sleep often, if not every night, in her husband’s bed; he realized, though, that he had inadvertently touched a nerve when Joan’s eyes rose anxiously to the heavens. It was an instinctive gesture of unease that she immediately tried to disguise, but for a man of fine intuition such as Nogaret, her faint sarcastic smile seemed a grimace of pain.

  “I wish I could help you, Nogaret. But lately my relations with the king are not the best.”

  The lawyer was touched by the displeasure of his queen, who despite being faithful and devoted to her husband, was a notoriously unhappy wife according to the people. Philip IV loved no one, they said, not even his own children. He had no heart or passions, and his every feeling was reserved for the government of France, a duty he seemed to interpret in an almost military sense. Thus it was that they had nicknamed him “the king of marble and iron”: he always had iron with him, figuratively speaking, because it was as if every morning he donned his heavy armour to go to war with someone. And as for the marble – well, that was in his chest, because his heart was made of stone.

  The dignitaries of the Louvre told of furious conjugal quarrels from which the poor queen emerged devastated, although with her head always held high. She was, Nogaret thought, a generous woman, and attentive to the needs of her people, so she was often forced to
deal herself with the troubles of those who had previously appealed to her husband, without success. As in his case.

  “Madame, I know that I am asking a great deal of you. But believe me, it is important!”

  His tone was truly distressed and her conscience dictated that she remedy the many mistakes and unkindness that her husband unfortunately committed.

  The queen caressed her pearl-studded forehead uneasily.

  “Very well, Nogaret. I will look in this secret cabinet for you,” she murmured. “But I shall need time, because I shall have to do it secretly.”

  “I am sorry, my lady. So things with your husband have reached this point?”

  A grimace of despair appeared on Joan’s face as her eyes grew misty. Why lie, since the courtiers did nothing but gossip about her for that very reason? Why try to deny what was now in the public domain?

  “Thank you, my lady. …”

  Nogaret bowed deeply before his queen, who suddenly turned her back on him and made to leave the cathedral. Her gesture had been sudden, and more brusque than in reality she had intended. She was fleeing out of modesty.

  To hide the tears she could no longer hold back.

  IV

  “Jesus travelled all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the Kingdom and healing every disease and every illness. Seeing the crowds, he felt pity for them, because they were tired and exhausted like sheep that have no shepherd…”

  The monotonous voice of the archpriest of Notre-Dame read that passage from the Gospels which seemed to have been written specifically to celebrate the healing charism granted by God to the monarchs of France. The whole court listened to him in silence as it watched the majestic figure of Philip IV standing between the crush of the sick on their knees, ready to receive health in body and soul from the touch of his hands.