In the Presence of Evil

by Tania Bayard

  ‘It’s time for you to go home, Georgette,’ Christine said.

  Georgette skulked out of the kitchen. The front door slammed. Francesca pointed to the pages Christine was holding. ‘Tell me what is written there.’

  Christine put the pages on the table. It was dark now, but she could read by the light of the fireplace. ‘The man tells his wife how to dress modestly, live chastely, say her prayers, conduct herself in church – things like that.’

  ‘Poor little wife.’ Francesca said. ‘A husband who preaches!’

  ‘Then comes advice for taking care of the house. And lots of recipes.’

  ‘Are any of them for pasta?’

  ‘No. But many kinds of sauces.’

  ‘Poh! The French use too many sauces.’

  ‘Ah! Here’s something you know about, Mama. How to cure a toothache by adding sage to boiling water and breathing the steam.’

  ‘The old man probably got a toothache because he threw bones into the fire.’

  ‘That’s one of your foolish beliefs I hadn’t heard before.’

  Christine knew her mother would go on about aliments and superstitions unless she changed the subject. She said, ‘Tomorrow there will be a banquet and a ball at the palace.’

  Francesca leaned over the table toward her. ‘A banquet and a ball? Who are they for?’

  ‘The queen’s favorite lady-in-waiting, Catherine de Fastavarin. She’s getting married again.’

  ‘Scandaloso! That woman has buried two husbands. Now there will be a third. And a party, too.’ Francesca sighed.

  ‘The queen is giving her ladies new gowns.’

  ‘They will have new hairdos, too, and new padded circlets, with lots of jewels. Their heads will be so big they will not be able to go through the doorways.’ She sighed again.

  Christine got up, went around the table, and stood behind her mother with her hands on her shoulders. ‘You miss the parties at the palace, don’t you, Mama.’

  Francesca leaned her cheek against Christine’s hand. ‘I do. But it is dangerous to go to the palace now. I wish you would not go there, Cristina.’

  ‘Please don’t start that again. Tell me what else you remember about the parties.’

  ‘They were splendid. There were singers and musicians – pipers, drummers, trombe – what’s the word?’

  ‘Trumpets.’

  ‘That’s right, trumpeters. And bagpipes.’ She made a face. ‘Up in the air.’ Francesca looked up, as if she could see the players on the musicians’ balcony. ‘And down below there were acrobats, walking on their hands. Tumblers bending over backwards, their heads almost touching the ground. And jugglers, with plates on their fingertips and knives on their chins. Once there was a little white dog that jumped through a hoop. He had a crooked tail, just like Goblin.’

  At the mention of his name, Goblin, who’d been lying under the table, stood up and gazed at Francesca. She gave him another piece of mutton.

  ‘I’m sure this party will be just as splendid,’ Christine said. ‘The queen always provides the best of everything for her favorite lady-in-waiting.’

  Lost in her memories, Francesca continued. ‘Tapestries covering the walls to keep the room warm. Tablecloths as white as snow. Saltcellars shaped like lions and dragons and ships. Gold and silver dishes on a sideboard, polished so you could see your face in them.’

  ‘I pity the servants who had to do all the polishing,’ Christine said.

  Francesca went on as if she hadn’t heard. ‘Masked dancers disguised as birds.’

  ‘There will be another kind of disguise at Catherine’s ball,’ Christine said. ‘The king and some of his friends will be dressed up like hairy wild men.’

  ‘Mio Dio! A masquerade!’ Francesca cried. She sprang up from the bench, nearly knocking it over, and stood facing Christine with alarm in her eyes. Goblin began to bark, and she lifted him into her arms, clutching him so tightly to her chest that he yelped. ‘Have the people at the court lost their minds along with the king?’

  ‘I think perhaps they have.’

  Francesca sat down heavily on the bench, and Christine decided to say nothing more about the masquerade. The room became very quiet. The fire crackled as burning logs settled into a bed of ashes, shadows on the wall took on ghostly shapes, and somewhere in the night, a dog howled. Francesca shuddered and put her hands over her ears. ‘There’s evil nearby,’ she whispered.

  Christine shivered, even though she didn’t believe in such things. She sat down on the bench beside her mother and put her arms around her.

  ‘The masquerade must be part of the evil,’ Francesca wailed. ‘It will bring more disaster – for the king, for everyone at the palace, and for us, too.’

  ‘That can’t be true,’ Christine said. She went to the hearth to get her mother a beaker of the licorice, fig, and barley water tisane, hoping that would calm her. But when she went back to the table, her mother had disappeared. She saw a faint light moving around in the pantry, and heard grumbling as Francesca tripped over something. After a while, a dark shape came back into the kitchen, holding a small dish. Christine knew what was coming; she resigned herself and settled down on the bench. It would take time, and she was tired, but she couldn’t leave her mother alone when she was so agitated.

  A pot of water sat on the hearth, and Francesca ladled some of this into a bowl. Then she sat on the bench, dipped a finger into the dish, and let a drop of oil fall into the water. She repeated this action again and again, waiting a long time for each new drop to settle. Finally, she sighed and pushed the bowl to one side.

  ‘It is the evil eye, Cristina. You know what that means.’

  ‘That’s absurd, Mama. There’s no such thing as the evil eye.’

  ‘It is the evil eye, Cristina. Someone must have cast it upon you, when you went to the palace.’ She wrung her hands. ‘It is because of the masquerade. The masquerade is the devil’s work.’ She got up and stood in front of her daughter. ‘This evil has already affected you, Cristina. Soon it will affect everyone.’

  Christine threw up her hands.

  But Francesca persisted. ‘Cannot the queen do something to stop it?’

  ‘The queen hasn’t been told. Her ladies don’t know, either. It will be an unpleasant surprise for them.’

  Francesca looked at her daughter suspiciously. ‘If the queen and her ladies have not been told, how do you know?’

  Christine picked up a taper and lit it against one of the logs in the fireplace. ‘It’s very late and I must go to bed now,’ she said as she started out the door. She wasn’t about to tell her mother she’d been talking to Marion.

  ELEVEN

  Among the ladies-in-waiting who served the queen, there was one named Catherine who enjoyed particular favor. The queen loved her dearly, because she was German and spoke German as she did. The king decided to marry this lady to a rich German lord, and to stage an event of unparalleled magnificence and liberality … Alas, no one knew that the festivities would end in a horrible tragedy.

  The Monk of Saint-Denis,

  Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denis,

  contenant le règne de Charles VI de 1380 à 1422

  When Christine woke the next morning, it was nearly sext, and she could hear her mother in the kitchen preparing the midday meal. She wanted to stay home and rest, but it was Catherine de Fastavarin’s wedding day, and she needed to finish the wedding present. The illuminations would have to be added later, but at least the text would be ready. She dressed, grabbed a few rissoles, and told her mother she’d probably be home very late.

  ‘I’ll find someone bigger than Colin to walk home with me,’ she assured her.

  As she walked slowly down the street, she met her children coming home for dinner. ‘Eccola,’ Thomas cried as he saw her.

  ‘Yes, I’m here,’ she said, laughing as she took him in her arms.

  Marie said, ‘You look tired. You should stay home and rest.’

  Jean took his mother
’s hand and stroked it, as if to say he understood why she had to go on with her work.

  Her steps were lighter as she continued on her way to the palace.

  In the royal bedroom, the queen sat holding her baby while her ladies-in-waiting, attended by a host of dressmakers and seamstresses, paraded around in their new finery. The room was awash in color and light: long, trailing gowns of scarlet, violet-blue, rose-red, olive green, and azure, belts with buckles of glittering gold and silver, necklaces of rubies, diamonds, and emeralds. It was all a blur to Christine. She tried to slip through the crowd unnoticed, nearly tripping over the queen’s dwarf, who sat on the floor in the center of the room. A hand reached out to steady her, and she was startled to find it belonged to Blanche.

  ‘You look very tired, mistress,’ the seamstress said.

  ‘So I am,’ Christine said, remembering Marie had said the same thing.

  ‘This will help,’ Blanche said as she handed her a sliver of licorice root.

  The smell of the licorice reminded Christine of her mother’s tisanes, but she thanked the seamstress and hurried to the room where she did her copying.

  Although she had difficulty concentrating, she was able to work steadily for a while. But the copying went more and more slowly as the effects of having stayed up so late the night before took their toll. She ate the rissoles she’d brought, and they made her even sleepier. There was a small bed in one corner of the room, and she crept over to it and lay down, thinking she would take a brief nap. When she woke, it was dark.

  She sat up and looked around. She had no idea how long she’d slept, but she knew it was late, because there were lighted candles in the queen’s bedchamber, although no one was there. They’ve all gone to the wedding banquet, she thought. Then she heard loud music in the distance; the ball had started. She stood up, walked into the queen’s bedchamber, and took one of the candles from its gilded holder. Holding it carefully in front of her, she stole out of the room and started down the deserted hallway. Some of the buildings at the Hôtel Saint-Pol were connected, and when she came to a passageway that seemed to lead in the direction of the music, she followed it. She had no idea where she was going, but her way was lit by torches that sat in brackets on the walls, and she was not afraid – until the music suddenly stopped, and other, terrifying, sounds replaced it.

  She turned a corner and came to a gallery with an elaborately carved balustrade on one side. Through the openings in the balustrade she could see across a wide space to a musicians’ balcony. The musicians weren’t playing. They’d dropped their shawms, sackbuts, clarions, and trumpets, and they were leaning far out over the railing of the balcony, looking down into a hall below, shouting and gesturing, their faces glowing in a fitful light.

  She stepped up on one of the balustrade’s lower railings and peered down through an opening. She couldn’t believe what she saw. The center of the hall was on fire. Flames crawled along the floor and leapt up toward the ceiling, and inside the flames were shapes, shapes that fell to the floor, rolled around, jumped up, and lurched from side to side. The shapes were men, five writhing men imprisoned in hairy costumes, screaming in agony and tearing at themselves as flames consumed them. The men who had dressed up to look like wild men of the forest were burning alive.

  Christine closed her eyes. The screams rang in her ears. The smell of burning flesh choked her. She lost her footing, slipped off the railing, caught herself, and climbed back up, clutching the balustrade with clammy hands. She looked again at the scene below and saw sheets of fire stripping away the masqueraders’ costumes. She saw hot pitch pouring down naked bodies, peeling away the skin. She saw blood and charred flesh covering the floor. She saw bystanders darting toward the burning men and jumping back to avoid the flames. Jewels in headdresses, necklaces, and belts flashed. Gold plates, goblets, and ewers tumbled from a sideboard. Tapestries caught sparks and went up in flames. Servants hurried to put out what fires they could, but they were helpless to save the men doing a grotesque dance of death in the center of the room.

  Christine cried out when she saw one of the burning men break away from the others and race to a passageway next to the hall. He jumped into a large barrel of water that had been set up there for washing dishes, then climbed out, naked but free of the flames. Christine remembered that the king was to have been one of the wild men, and she felt the blood rush to her face as she stared at the saved man, hoping it was the king. But it was someone else.

  She looked back at the center of the room and saw the king’s brother standing near the flaming men with lighted torches in his hands and an expression of anguish on his face. Behind him, on a dais, the queen lay back in a faint, with her ladies gathered around her, wailing and wringing their hands.

  Below the dais sat a group of noblewomen. One of them wore a voluminous blue-and-gold gown, and Christine was astonished to see a hairy head emerge from the folds. With a start, she realized there had been a sixth wild man, and he’d been saved, because the young woman had thrown the train of her gown over him to put out the flames. The man looked around, dazed and seemingly unable to comprehend what was happening. Christine couldn’t see his face, it was so covered with soot, but she prayed it was the king.

  The acrobats, jugglers, and tumblers who’d entertained the guests earlier in the evening stood huddled together at the back of the room. One of them held a small white dog that jumped out of his arms and raced around the room in such a frenzy that he got too close to a burning tapestry. A spark fell onto his fur, flames sprang up, and he, too, was consumed, howling as his little body was charred beyond recognition.

  Christine turned and ran back along the gallery, sobbing and stumbling and reaching out to support herself against the tapestried wall. Somehow she found her way back to the queen’s chambers, where she had just enough presence of mind to retrieve her cloak and her writing materials before she rushed out of the palace.

  In the courtyard, people were running toward the street, frantic to get away from the fire. She covered her face with her cloak and ran with them. It was a clear, cold night, and a full moon lit her way as she raced toward home. News of what was happening at the palace had preceded her, and the streets were clogged with groups of people talking excitedly. She hoped her mother was not among them. Or standing at the door of their house, waiting for her. But Francesca was in the kitchen, asleep on a bench, her head on the table. Christine pulled her to her feet, half carried her up to her room, and laid her gently on her bed. Then she staggered to her own room, fell to the floor, and wept. The full horror of what she had seen descended on her like a shroud. She longed to go in to her mother, wake her, and ask her to comfort her.

  But if there was anything she knew for certain, it was that she would never tell her mother, or anyone else, that she had been at the palace that night.

  TWELVE

  Don’t let your maidservants swear or speak coarse, lewd words.

  From a book of moral and practical advice

  for a young wife, Paris, 1393

  It was dawn when Christine finally got to sleep, and she was almost immediately wakened by Georgette, who rushed into the house shouting incoherently. She heard Francesca and the children and Goblin go pounding down the stairs, but she didn’t follow. She knew what Georgette was going to tell them. She covered her head with the bedclothes and tried not to listen to the excited voices below, until she realized from her mother’s impatient outcries that the girl was being more exasperating than usual. She stumbled out of bed, pulled on her chemise, tiptoed down the stairs, and peered into the kitchen.

  Georgette stood babbling in the center of the room, her eyes wide with terror. Everyone crowded around, trying unsuccessfully to calm her. Finally Francesca pushed the children away, took the girl by the shoulders, and eased her down onto a bench. ‘Piano, piano,’ she said. ‘Speak so we can understand.’

  ‘Colin told me. It’s the devil’s work.’ Georgette was so short of breath she could hardly utter the
words.

  Francesca went to the pantry, filled a goblet with wine, and made the girl drink it. She choked on the first swallow, coughed, spat wine out onto the floor, and then drained the goblet in noisy gulps. Finally she managed to say, ‘Last night at the ball. Colin was hiding behind the door. He saw it.’

  ‘Saw what?’ Francesca asked impatiently.

  ‘The wild men.’

  ‘The masquerade!’ Francesca cried.

  ‘They burned to death.’

  ‘Madonna!’

  Christine crept back up the stairs, hid under the covers again – until she heard Thomas shouting, ‘The king! The king is dead!’

  She jumped up.

  ‘No,’ Georgette said. ‘The Duchess of Berry threw her skirts over him and put out the flames.’

  ‘Grazie a Dio!’ Francesca said.

  Christine stepped into the kitchen again just as Georgette became calm enough to tell about the man who had dived into the vat of water. Then she became agitated as she told about the four other men, one of whom had died on the spot. ‘Three of them are still alive, but not for long,’ the girl wailed. ‘They’re at the palace, and everyone has to listen to them screaming.’

  ‘Enough!’ Christine cried, and they all turned to look at her. They’d been so engrossed in Georgette’s story, they hadn’t seen her come in.

  ‘But there’s more,’ Georgette announced. ‘That handsome knight Hugues de Précy is dead too, and he wasn’t even at the masquerade. They found him lying in the street outside the palace. He’d been poisoned.

  Christine gasped. ‘When was he murdered?’

  ‘Just before all the people ran out of the palace, running away from the fire.’

  ‘A knight! Poisoned! Who would do such a thing?’ Francesca asked.

  ‘His wife,’ Georgette said. ‘She was lying right there beside him, with the flask she’d brought the poison in under her hand.’

  When Georgette was more composed, Francesca sent her out to learn what was being said in the streets. Soon she returned. ‘I met my friends. They told me men went to the palace and tried to break the doors down. They wanted to kill the Duke of Orléans, because they thought the king was dead, and that it was his fault, because he brought lighted torches into the room where they were having the masquerade. Then the king came out and showed them he was alive, so they went away. But it’s dangerous out there – people are angry. The king could have died.’