by Tania Bayard
As she passed the markets at les Halles, thankful she’d escaped from her house without orders from her mother to pick up a head of cabbage or a piece of cheese, one of Francesca’s friends, a hunched old woman with snow-white hair, approached. Hoping to avoid her, Christine turned down a side street, but the woman called out, ‘Come to the pillory!’ Christine shook her head. She was in no mood to stand around in a marketplace jeering at thieves and dishonest merchants with their heads and arms stuck through holes in a revolving iron wheel.
‘Well, tell your mother the butter seller who cheated her is in there. They’ve put a lump of his rancid butter on his head.’ The woman cackled and hurried off. Christine walked down the rue Saint-Honoré, thinking unkind thoughts about old women who enjoyed public displays of cruel punishments.
When she came to the intersection of the rue Saint-Honoré and the rue de l’Arbre-Sec, she found herself under a rotting corpse swinging from the gallows. Shreds of the man’s jerkin and leggings hung from his exposed bones, and two crows tugged at what bits of flesh remained. The vendors who used the crossroads as their marketplace ignored the cadaver as they cried the virtues of their wafers, meat pies, and onions, but for Christine the body was a gruesome reminder of the dead man at the palace. Feeling ill, she walked unsteadily to the stone cross at the junction of the two streets, and tripped and fell on the steps at its base. Strong arms pulled her to her feet and a husky voice asked, ‘What’s Lady Christine doing here?’
She leaned against her rescuer. ‘I could ask the same of you, Marion.’
‘It’s not what you think. I’m just buying something to eat.’
Christine considered prostitution a grievous sin, but she had known Marion for a long time, and she liked her. The girl’s mother had worked for her family as a housemaid, but when Francesca had learned the woman’s daughter was a prostitute, she’d dismissed her. Christine thought this unfair, and she’d argued it wasn’t Marion’s fault she’d been raped when she was fourteen and wouldn’t be able to find a respectable husband. She’d told Francesca she would try to convince Marion to take up another profession, hoping this would persuade her mother to keep the woman on, but Francesca had been adamant: ‘I do not want people to talk about me because I have let the mother of a prostitute into my house.’ Marion knew how Francesca felt about her, but she didn’t care. Now eighteen, she mocked Christine’s respectability, calling her Lady Christine, and usually greeting her with a curtsey. Francesca would have been appalled.
Marion eased Christine down onto the stone step at the base of the cross and sat beside her. ‘If you’re feeling unwell, I can understand why. Bodies.’
‘I suppose you mean that,’ Christine said, looking up at the corpse on the gallows.
‘That, and the one you found at the palace. It’s enough to make anyone spew.’
Christine had to laugh. Marion had always been able to make her laugh, even during the terrible days following Étienne’s death. She wondered how Marion had learned she’d discovered the body at the palace, but she knew it would be futile to ask. Just as futile as asking about the bruise she saw on the girl’s cheek. Marion spoke her mind about many things, but she never discussed her private life.
Marion rummaged in her purse and found some cloves. ‘To settle your stomach,’ she said as she handed them to Christine. ‘I wonder what became of the pretty little lady who was with you. I pity her. They say her husband abuses her.’
‘Surely that can’t be true!’
‘I’m certain it is. Men are all bastards, even the ones at the palace. Even the Duke of Orléans. He wants for nothing, yet he flies into a rage about some old book. He probably abuses his wife, too.’
‘Do you know something about the book?’
Marion lowered her gaze. ‘Ha! Louis, Duke of Orléans, with his padded shoulders and pinked sleeves. Look! I’ve embroidered him.’ She held up her purse so Christine could see that it was decorated with the image of a nobleman clad in an emerald green doublet, long pink scalloped sleeves, silver hose, and a beaver hat ornamented with turquoise peacock feathers.
Christine had known Marion did embroidery, and she had seen other examples of her work, but this was extraordinary. ‘You could sell that,’ she said.
Marion hid the purse under her cloak and changed the subject. ‘I suspect it was a book of magic.’
‘So you do know something about it!’
Marion shook her head. ‘I’m only guessing. But the duke believes in magic, you know. He’s even asked me to teach him some.’ She jumped to her feet. ‘I can teach you, too. Here’s how to make a love potion. Stick a rooster’s head between your buns and squeeze till it’s dead. Then cut off its balls, grind ’em up, and put ’em in your lover’s wine. They say it works every time.’
Christine couldn’t help smiling, but she turned away so Marion wouldn’t see.
‘Lots of people believe in magic,’ Marion said. ‘Even the king.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because of something that’s going to happen next week. Have you heard about the banquet and marriage ball for the queen’s favorite lady-in-waiting, Catherine?
‘I’ve heard.’
‘What you haven’t heard is this. The king and some of his friends are planning a masquerade that night. They’re going to put pitch all over their bodies and cover it with flax, to make themselves look like hairy wild men of the forest.’
Christine was appalled. The men were planning a cruel ritual meant to humiliate a woman marrying for a second time – in this case, a third. The men would do a lewd, frenzied dance, and she shuddered to think of how the diabolical performance might affect the king, whose mind was already so unsettled. ‘Why would the king agree to be part of such a thing?’ she wondered out loud.
‘Because the masquerade is supposed to heal him. The wild men will call out the demons in his head and drive them away. Or perhaps they are witless enough to think they can catch the demons and kill them.’
‘Where do you get such ideas?’
‘I’m only repeating what I’ve heard. The queen and her ladies don’t know about the masquerade – the men are keeping it a secret.’
Christine knew better than to ask how Marion knew about it. She merely said, ‘Those men are fools.’
‘I know.’ Marion held out a hand to help Christine up. ‘Come. It’s getting late, and you look ill. I’ll walk home with you.’ She took Christine’s arm and led her firmly up the street. When they came to the secondhand clothes market by the cemetery of the Innocents, she stopped to peer at the gowns in one of the stalls. ‘Nothing special there,’ she sniffed. ‘I’ll wait until after the marriage ball.’ Christine smiled, picturing Marion prancing around in a long blue velvet houppelande trimmed with gold, her red hair studded with beads and piled high on her head in imitation of the enormous jeweled hairdos so popular with the queen and her ladies.
They walked on, Marion musing about the masquerade all the way to Christine’s street. ‘You won’t be invited to the ball, Lady Christine, so you won’t be there to see the demons,’ she said as she turned to go back home. ‘But I think something very bad is going to happen, and we’ll all be affected, one way or another.’
NINE
In those days were burned in Paris many mandrakes that had been safeguarded in secret places by foolish people who had faith in such rubbish, firmly believing that as long as they kept them neatly clothed in fine silk or linen, they would never be poor.
Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris, 1405–1449
Several days later, Colin arrived at Christine’s house early in the morning with a message from the queen summoning her back to the palace. This time she put on the linen headdress she disliked, hoping it would stay in place, gathered together her writing materials and stuffed them into her pouch along with some egg-and-chestnut rissoles wrapped in one of her mother’s dishcloths – she planned not to be home in time for dinner – and left the house with Colin quickly, ignoring Fran
cesca’s protests.
It was a sunny day, and the streets were crowded with women out to do their marketing, merchants, couriers, and noblemen hurrying to and from the palace, and street vendors offering their wares. The scrawny man with the meat pasties was in his usual place, and Colin looked with longing at his basket. Christine bought two pasties and gave him one. He gulped it down, then asked, ‘Aren’t you afraid to go back to the palace? The last time you went there you found a body.’
She was tempted to tell him she wasn’t worried, but that would have been a lie, so she merely shrugged and walked on.
In the courtyard of the queen’s residence, Renaut was standing beside the lion fountain. ‘Will you talk to the stone lion today?’ he asked. In the distance, one of the king’s lions roared. The boy bounced up and down with excitement. ‘You could go and talk to them instead,’ he said, giggling so hard his red cap flew off and his tawny hair swirled around his face.
Simon, who’d stepped out into the courtyard, laughed. ‘He thinks you’re very brave.’
Colin hovered around, whistling softly, and Simon laughed again. ‘On the other hand, Colin thinks you might need him to accompany you past the place where you found the body.’
Christine shook her head and went into the palace alone. Nevertheless, she was glad the guards were back at their posts in the great gallery. The chest had been returned to its normal place, but there were bloodstains on the floor, awakening memories of rigid fingers, bare feet, and sightless eyes. She walked past quickly and came to the entrance to the room where she’d seen the king and his brother the day of the murder. Standing there were Alix de Clairy and her husband, Hugues de Précy. Alix, wearing a mantle of dark-blue velvet over a sea-green houppelande with a gold belt, carried a cumbersome black leather pouch instead of the velvet sack with her harp. The black pouch seemed out of place, but she looked elegant, nevertheless. On the other hand, Hugues, who had a reputation for having affairs with women at the court and was excessively vain, fit perfectly Christine’s idea of a fop. That day he wore a cap with long turquoise feathers, a short russet-colored tunic, skin-tight hose – one leg blue, the other red – and the foot-long poulaines that were the latest fashion in shoes. When Alix touched his arm gently, he brushed her hand away and swaggered into the room, removing his cap and running his hands through his tawny curls. He was limping, and Christine thought it was because he was unable to keep the excessively long points of his shoes from crossing.
Alix looking sadly after her husband. Christine went to stand beside her, and said, ‘I looked for you, after we found the man who was stabbed.’
Alix turned to her. ‘It was horrible. I had to leave.’
‘Did you know who the man was?’
‘No, no.’ Alix shifted the black pouch from one hand to the other, and said quickly, ‘Are you going to the queen’s chambers? If so, I’ll come with you.’ Christine nodded, and they walked on. Before Christine could ask any more questions about the murdered man, Alix changed the subject.
‘How did you come to be a scribe?’
‘There is little to tell. My husband died, and it became necessary for me to support my family.’ She hoped she would not have to justify her profession to this young woman who could know nothing of the trials of a widow. At sixteen, she herself could not have foreseen the difficulties she would one day face: the long hours spent in the law courts attempting to obtain what was owed her from her husband’s estate, the greed and dishonesty of the people who stole money she had invested with them, the disdain of those who shunned her because she was a woman fighting for what was rightfully hers.
‘Are there many women scribes?’ Alix asked. Away from her husband, she seemed like a lively, curious child. She reminded Christine of Renaut.
‘There are others.’
To Christine’s surprise, Alix made none of the usual comments about a woman doing a man’s work. Instead, she said, ‘I envy you, going freely about the city. I would like to do that.’
‘Would your husband approve?’
Alix looked away.
Christine wondered what was in the sack she carried, and where her harp was. ‘I have heard you singing for the queen,’ she said. ‘I recognized one of your songs: the one you sang with the queen’s dwarf.’
Alix smiled. ‘I learned that song when I was a little girl. Do you know, I even sang it for the king, when he came to Amiens to be married. My father held a big banquet, and the king came and he asked me to sing. I thought it was splendid to sing for a king.’
Christine remembered that time. Étienne had gone with the king’s entourage to Amiens. Was it possible he’d learned the song from Alix? It was an unusual song, not one he would have heard just anywhere. ‘Do you remember any of the men who were with the king?’ she asked.
‘I was only eight. There were so many.’
‘My husband was one of them. I’d like to think he learned that song from you,’ Christine said.
They had come to an inner courtyard and Alix pointed to a glass-paned window through which they could see into a room of the palace. A bearded old man wearing a long purple robe sat there at a desk, engrossed in a large book. ‘That’s one of the king’s physicians, looking for a cure for him,’ Alix said. ‘He’s tried many things. I have something better.’ She held up the black leather pouch. ‘There’s a mandrake root in here.’
Christine was appalled. Many people thought mandrake roots had mysterious powers, even her own father. Once, when she was a child, he’d showed her a picture of a hideous root in an herbal. She’d made a face. ‘I know,’ he’d said. ‘The mandrake is not comely. And its juice is deadly poison. But it is a wondrous plant, Cristina, and you must not mock it. Doctors esteem it, because they know how to administer just the right amount of its juice to numb pain without killing the patient. And it has an even greater virtue.’ He’d traced the outline of the root with his finger. ‘Do you see how it is shaped like a man? That is because it houses a little spirit. The spirit can bring you luck, and it can drive away demons.’ His voice – hushed, as if he were under a spell – had frightened her. From that moment, Christine had feared the mandrake. It seemed an evil omen that Alix de Clairy had carried one into the palace.
‘Where did you get it?’ she asked.
‘My old nursemaid gave it to me.’
‘There are many herbs that might benefit the king. Surely the doctors have tried them.’
‘Assuredly. They give him potions of vervain, motherwort, and thyme, and they tie herbs around his head. None of it does any good.’
‘Neither will what you have in your pouch. In truth, it may do the king harm. Do you truly believe there’s a spirit in the mandrake that can cure his affliction?’
‘I don’t know. But if the queen believes it, she’ll be happier.’
‘That may be, but mandrakes contain deadly poison. People may misunderstand your intentions.’
Alix smiled and adjusted the gold cord that closed her blue mantle. ‘The queen knows I want to help.’
‘What about her ladies?’
‘I have no concern for what they think.’
They came to a gallery where one of the walls was covered with a painting of a garden. Under a blue sky filled with billowy white clouds, children played, gathering flowers and climbing fruit trees to pick crimson apples and golden pears. Alix reached out to them, as if she longed to join in their fun. Christine was reminded of a picture she’d seen in an illuminated Book of Hours, a rose arbor where the Virgin Mary sat surrounded by angels with harps, all busy making music – all except for one mischievous angel who was picking a red rose. Alix is like that little imp, she thought. She doesn’t realize the court is a perilous place where it’s not wise to ignore the rules.
Feeling the need to protect the young woman, she took her arm and held it tightly as they walked across a courtyard, through a doorway decorated with a frieze of dragons and centaurs, up a winding staircase, and along a tapestried hallway to the queen�
��s apartments.
In the queen’s bedchamber, the air was warm and heavy with the smell of rose water, lavender, candle wax, and wood smoke. Queen Isabeau sat on a low-backed chair beside her fireplace, wearing a houppelande of blue silk damask shot through with silver threads that glistened in the light of the flames. From the corners of the room, braziers with burning coals added more heat, but even that was not enough for the queen, who cupped her hands around a hollow gold ball filled with hot cinders. As she stood in the doorway with Alix de Clairy, Christine watched a chambermaid dress the queen’s hair, twisting the long black strands around balls of cloth, fastening them with jeweled pins, and arranging them over her ears like horns. The woman held the pins between her lips – something Francesca had advised Christine never to do – and from time to time she plucked one from her mouth and jabbed it into one of the horns. Another chambermaid waited to crown the arrangement with a padded and jeweled circlet that resembled a bowl of fruit. The queen’s dwarf, who wore a similar circlet, stood nearby, leaning against the queen’s greyhound.
Her hairdo complete, the queen rose from the chair and went to recline on the red coverlet spread over her ceremonial bed. Catherine de Fastavarin, perched on her large blue cushion, spoke to her excitedly in German; Christine supposed they were discussing the wedding. The other ladies-in-waiting stood idly by, and Christine thought that with their brightly colored gowns, whitened faces, and reddened cheeks and lips, they resembled exotic flowers, exuding cloying perfume as they wilted in the over-heated room. Even the flames in the fireplace seemed listless. Only the greyhound was alert. He jumped up, nearly overturning the dwarf, trotted over to Christine, and thrust his cold, wet nose into her hand.
