by Tania Bayard
Francesca threw up her hands. To divert her attention from Colin, Christine said, ‘I learned something from the old woman Michel and I visited. Alix de Clairy’s birth mother gave her away the day she was born. Alix doesn’t know.’
‘How could a mother do such a thing? Who was she?’
‘No one knows.’ Francesca was watching Colin, and Christine said quickly, ‘There’s something else I want to talk to you about. How well do you know Henri Le Picart?’
‘He was a friend of your father’s. I did not like him. Why do you ask?’
‘Remember what Michel told us? He’s Alix de Clairy’s uncle.’
‘Then why does he not help her?’
‘Perhaps because he is Hugues de Précy’s murderer. I wonder about him.’
‘You said you saw Henri in the library at the Louvre. Why do you not ask Gilles Malet about him?’
‘Gilles is angry with me.’
‘I cannot believe he is so angry he will not answer a few questions.’
Christine took another tart and thought for a moment. ‘Perhaps you’re right. I’ll go and speak with him tomorrow.’
When Michel hadn’t arrived by sext the next day, Christine didn’t have the patience to wait any longer for him. She asked her mother to tell him to meet her at the Louvre, put on her cloak, and started out the door. Then she remembered the mandrake. Not wanting to have it in the house for another night, she ran up to her room, retrieved it from the chest, and threw it into her leather pouch, vowing not to forget to give it to Michel the next time she saw him.
It was a bright day, unusually warm for that time of year, and the sun had turned the streets into rivers of mud that splattered up onto her cloak every time a horseman galloped by. She expected to see Marion around somewhere, and she wasn’t disappointed; the girl was waiting for her at the corner of the rue Tiron, wearing a turquoise mantle, open to show off a lavender blue surcoat with a band of bright orange-and-yellow flowers embroidered down the front. She took hold of Christine’s arm to prevent her from stepping into a particularly foul-smelling puddle.
‘Where are you going, Lady Christine?’
‘To speak to the librarian at the Louvre.’
‘You shouldn’t be walking on this muddy street. I’ll go with you and show you a better route.’
The street Marion chose was even dirtier than the one Christine had been on, so they decided to go over to the Grève. When they arrived at the sandy open space, where they were jostled by men carrying casks of wine and vagrants looking for work, Marion began to describe a beheading that had taken place there the day before. Christine couldn’t bear to think about executions. She put her hands over her ears and hurried along.
‘Why the rush?’ Marion asked.
‘I want to find out all I can about Henri Le Picart.’
‘That man frightens me. But he knows how to get my friends out of the Châtelet.’
So besides lending money to the king’s brother, Henri rescues prostitutes from prison, Christine thought. Just as Marie said – an interesting man. ‘He’s Alix de Clairy’s uncle,’ she said.
‘So why doesn’t he help her?’
‘That’s what I want to know.’
‘Come on, then. Let’s walk beside the river.’ Marion ran off, and Christine hurried after her. The ice on the Seine was breaking up, and the thawing river smelled like a sewer, but that was nothing compared to the stench they encountered when they reached the area near the Châtelet. Marion held her nose and pronounced the odor worse than all the farts in Paris. She took Christine’s arm and pulled her down the street toward the Louvre.
When they came near the building, Christine said, ‘Why don’t you go to the secondhand clothes market and wait for me there, Marion. Perhaps some of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting have discarded the dresses they wore to Catherine de Fastavarin’s marriage ball.’
‘I know I can’t go into the library with you, Lady Christine. But you shouldn’t go by yourself. There are too many hiding places for the murderer – all those books.’
‘I won’t be alone. Brother Michel is coming to meet me.’
‘If you think that monk friend of yours will be able to protect you, you’re as thickheaded as he is.’ Marion closed her mantle tightly and started to walk away, with her nose in the air. ‘If you don’t get attacked by the murderer, you might pass by the clothes market on your way home and look for me. Perhaps I’ll still be there.’
THIRTY-THREE
A virtuous woman is rarer than a phoenix or a white crow.
Jean de Meun,
Le Roman de la Rose (Part II), c.1275
Do not think me, a mere women, foolish, arrogant, or presumptuous for daring to criticize an author of such refinement whose work is much praised when he, just one man, dares to defame and censure without exception an entire sex.
Christine de Pizan, Letter to Jean de Montreuil, 1401
In the library, Christine found Gilles sitting at his desk looking so agitated she was tempted to retreat back down the stairs. She dropped the pouch with the mandrake onto a bench just inside the door, laid her cloak on top of it, and waited for him to notice her. But instead of looking up, he shuffled the books on his desk, causing one of them to fall to the floor. She walked over and picked it up. It was only then that he realized she was there. He seized the book from her hands.
‘Why are you here, Christine?’
She had never seen him so overwrought. Nevertheless, she was determined to get the information she had come for. ‘I want to speak to you about Henri Le Picart.’
Gilles looked toward the door. ‘I have no time. The Duke of Orléans is here.’
She turned and was dismayed to see Louis, with Guy de Marolles right behind him. The duke stepped into the room, swept off his big beaver hat and made her a deep bow. ‘So, my little emissary. I trust you have learned something from Alix de Clairy.’ He removed his crimson cape and handed it and the hat to Guy.
Michel hasn’t spoken to him, she thought. Too disconcerted to say anything, she merely shook her head.
The duke started to pace around the room like an animal on the prowl, all the while keeping his eyes on her face. Behind him, Guy snickered. Then Louis stood in front of her. ‘I want that book, Christine.’
‘Alix was too confused to think clearly about it, Monseigneur.’
‘Then you did not speak to her properly. I thought better of you, Christine. Surely you could have devised a way to make her tell you what I want to know.’
‘Perhaps I could, if it were possible to visit her again.’
He resumed pacing, frowning and clasping his hands behind his back. Then he said, ‘Very well. But I warn you: this is your last chance. All will not be well with you if I do not have that book tomorrow.’ He looked at Gilles. ‘Give me something so I can write a letter.’
Moving as if in a trance, Gilles laid a piece of parchment on his desk, took an inkwell and a quill from a cupboard, set them beside the parchment, and stood to one side, looking at the floor.
The duke went to the desk and sat down. ‘You’re not yourself, Gilles.’
Gilles said nothing. He merely put a hand on a corner of the parchment to hold it steady while Louis wrote. For once, his bushy eyebrows were still.
Louis sat with one leg thrust out, the hand that wasn’t writing resting on his hip. No sign of anger clouded his handsome face, and for a moment Christine breathed easily, telling herself his threat had not been serious. But she could hear Guy snickering, and she realized that, as usual, more went on with the duke than met the eye.
Louis finished the letter, stood up, and handed it to her. He took his cape and hat from Guy and motioned to Gilles. ‘Come with me to the rue de la Harpe. I want your advice about a breviary I’m thinking of buying.’
As if waking from a dream, Gilles, who seemed to have forgotten Christine was there, picked up his cloak and followed Louis out the door. Guy made her a mocking little bow and hurried after them.
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Alone in the library, Christine stood by Gilles’s desk, holding the duke’s letter. Sun streamed in through the glass-paned windows on the other side of the room, but she was not warmed; the perspiration that ran down her back was icy cold. She knew she would never be able to obtain the information the duke wanted. She wouldn’t be able to save Alix de Clairy. Alix would forgive her, but the duke wouldn’t.
For a long time, she stood in a daze. When she became conscious of her surroundings again, she was surprised to find she was still holding Louis’s letter in her hand. She folded it and put it in her sleeve. She looked at Gilles’s desk and saw the book she had picked up from the floor. It was a book her husband had told her about, The Romance of the Rose. She had once remarked to Étienne that, from its title, it sounded delightful. ‘You wouldn’t think so if you knew what was in it,’ he’d said, laughing. To distract herself from her troubled thoughts, she sat down and started to read. As she skimmed through the first part, an allegory of love, she decided the book was pleasant enough. But that was only the first part. There were two authors, and when the second one took up the story, he turned it into a diatribe against women. She began to read in earnest. The author’s attitude toward women appalled her. In one place he wrote, ‘A virtuous woman is rarer than a phoenix or a white crow,’ and in another, ‘A woman is an animal full of wrath, waspish and fickle.’ And then, ‘A woman has no understanding at all.’ She was so infuriated, she scarcely noticed a fluttering sound on the other side of the room. But as the noise went on and on, she closed the book and went to investigate.
She remembered Gilles telling her the wire mesh on the library windows was deteriorating, and now she could see why that worried him. One side of a double window was open, and because the mesh behind it had fallen away, a bird had flown in and become trapped behind the glass on the other side. Perhaps a phoenix, or a white crow, she thought angrily. But it was only a tiny sparrow, flapping around in desperation as it tried to find the way out. The base of the window was above her head, so she found a stool and stood on it. When the sparrow saw her, it hopped into the corner and remained perfectly still as she put her hand in and picked it up. She held it for a moment, feeling the beating of its heart under its soft feathers. But when she tried to stroke its head with her finger, it struggled so hard she was afraid it would hurt itself. She opened her hand and let it fly away.
She stayed on the stool and gazed out the open window, looking over barren gardens to the Porte Saint-Honoré, whose round towers with their pointed roofs rose above King Charles the Fifth’s new wall. She was well aware that just on the other side of the wall was the Marché aux Pourceaux, and she tried not to think about it, for it was to the pig market that criminals condemned to be burned alive were taken. She concentrated instead on the scene farther to the north – brown fields and vineyards on a hill dotted with windmills and topped by the church of Saint-Pierre and the convent of the nuns of Montmartre. The air was turning colder, and black clouds cast long shadows over the fields. Another winter storm was on the way. She imagined she could see the nuns in the convent garth, perhaps collecting laundry they’d hung outdoors to dry, and she thought about how peaceful the sisters’ existence was compared with hers. Then she remembered the book on Gilles’s desk. Why did men write those things about women? Some of them deserved it, she supposed – those who thought mandrakes had little demons in them. But to say that women have no understanding at all!
She stepped down from the stool, and as she did so, her foot struck the wood paneling just above the floor. One of the panels fell away, exposing a large opening in the wall. Noticing something brown inside the opening, she bent down, looked in, and recoiled in horror. She thrust the panel back into place, dashed to the other side of the room, scooped up her cloak and the pouch with the mandrake, and started out the door. Gilles was there, and she nearly bumped into him. He started to speak, but she brushed past him and forced herself to walk slowly down the spiral staircase. Then she ran.
THIRTY-FOUR
Please tell me why so many authors revile women in their books.
Christine de Pizan,
Le Livre de la Cité des Dames, 1404–1405
She raced across the moat and up the rue Saint-Honoré, sloshing through puddles and slipping in mud, until she reached the rue de l’Arbre-Sec where, struggling to get her breath, she sank down onto a step at the base of the stone cross. The vegetable sellers were still hawking their produce, and the corpse was still rotting on the gallows, but she noticed nothing.
Suddenly, Michel ran up to her, panting and flinging his arms about. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you,’ he gasped, as he lowered himself onto the step beside her.
‘Didn’t my mother tell you I’d be in the library?’
‘Of course she did. But you aren’t in the library, are you? It’s just luck that I came this way.’ He was puffing so hard he could barely speak, but he managed to ask, ‘What are you doing here? Why do you look so distressed?’ He put his hand out to steady himself and overturned a basket one of the vendors had placed on the step.
‘I hope a canker rots you, porc de Dieu!’ cursed the old woman. She seized her onions and turnips, threw them into the basket, and moved away.
‘This is not a pleasant place,’ the monk said.
‘I need to talk to you, Michel.’
‘If it’s about the duke’s book, I have disappointing news for you. I wasn’t able to speak with him. I’m sorry.’
‘It doesn’t matter now. I’ve found the book. It’s in the library at the Louvre.’
At first, the monk looked at her without comprehending. Then he laughed. ‘Well, well, after all this excitement. In the library. That is the best place for it.’
‘You don’t understand. The book is hidden in the library.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘It’s hidden in an opening at the bottom of a wall. A panel fell away, and I saw it there.’
‘How do you know it was the right book?’
‘I saw the symbols on the cover. The duke has more confidence in me than you do; he described the book to me.’
The monk looked pained. ‘Does Gilles know you found it?’
‘You really do doubt my intelligence, don’t you?’ She put her hands over her face. ‘Oh, Michel, what shall I do? Gilles has always been good to me.’
‘People aren’t always what they seem. Didn’t it ever occur to you that Gilles would do almost anything for a book?’
‘I can’t believe it. Gilles must have found it somewhere after Hugues de Précy was murdered.’ She turned to the monk, and asked angrily, ‘Why won’t you tell me what’s in that book?’
‘It is best you don’t know.’
She jumped up and stood in front of him with her hands on her hips. ‘I’ve had enough of this, Michel. You act as though I have no understanding at all, as though I were a waspish phoenix, or a wrathful crow, or any fickle woman.’ Her voice rose as she garbled the insulting descriptions of women in The Romance of the Rose.
The vegetable sellers were staring at them. ‘We can’t talk here,’ Michel said. ‘Come with me.’ He led her down the rue de l’Arbre-Sec to the church of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois and made her sit on a stone bench in front of the main portal. The seat was still warm from the morning sun, but the sky had turned gray, and the air felt cold. Gusts of wind sent dry leaves and debris spinning around their feet.
Michel sat beside her and tucked his hands into the sleeves of his habit. ‘Now, about fickle women and waspish crows.’
‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘Oh, I’ve read The Romance of the Rose.’
‘Then perhaps someday you’ll tell me why one of the authors of that book felt it necessary to write those terrible things about women. But let’s forget about The Romance of the Rose now. I want to know what’s in the other book, the one everyone is so eager to have.’
Michel glanced around to make sure they were alone, and th
en he leaned toward her. ‘I’m sure you know about all those charlatans who claim they can restore the king to health. Well, there was one who was even more evil than the others. He styled himself a monk, but he was no monk. He was a demon from Hell!’ He turned his head and spat onto the ground. ‘Because he was as thin as a skeleton, and his filthy clothes hung on him like rags, everyone thought he had mortified his body through pious devotions. That was a disguise; the only creature he was devoted to was the Devil. He succeeded in this deception because it is in the nature of many people to wish to be deceived. The Duke of Orléans is among those people; he was going to let him practice his vile magic on the king. Abominable! Abominable!’
Christine shivered. ‘The man I found behind the chest?’
‘Yes. And the book he was carrying contains instructions for working magic spells and conjuring demons, rituals that can supposedly be used to cure the king. Hugues de Précy killed him and stole the book so he could give it to the queen, to gain favor for himself.’
‘The duke suspects this about Hugues, yet he hasn’t told the king?’
‘The king loved Hugues de Précy. Even his own brother would be reluctant to tell him Hugues was a murderer and a thief.’
‘Tell me more about this book.’
Michel sighed. ‘It’s not what’s in the book. It’s what many people believe about the book. They think it will give whomever possesses it power over everything on earth and in heaven.’ Christine felt a chill go down her spine; Michel’s voice was as solemn as her father’s had been the day he’d told her about mandrakes.
‘So you don’t believe the book by itself has any kind of evil power?’
‘Of course not. I would never give credence to such nonsense.’
‘What about the omens and signs you and my mother are always talking about?’
‘That is not the same. God speaks to us through signs. This book has an altogether different significance, altogether different. By itself it could have no effect on anything. But some of the people who think it does are evil beyond measure, and if the book falls into the wrong hands, there’s no telling what could happen. Don’t you understand? Hugues de Précy killed a man to obtain it. Someone seems to have killed Hugues for the same reason. Imagine all the other terrible things that may occur because of that book.’
