The Burning Road

by Ann Benson

  Alejandro ate the meat in silence, his eyes glued distrustfully to his captor, thinking, It is as if he has planned for my return.

  “Now you must tell me of your travels, Physician. After your flight from Canterbury, we heard far less of you than we would have liked.”

  We? Who, precisely, was “we”? Almost unconsciously, he gripped the knife tighter, causing the veins on the back of his hand to bulge blue. He thought momentarily of leaping across the table and slitting the throat of the dangerous, arrogant man who held him prisoner.

  Not wishing to alarm his captor, he laid the implement on the table, but kept his hand near it as the idea of putting an end to de Chauliac swirled tumultuously around in his mind. It would only take the blink of an eye. But the guards would be upon him in an instant, and there could be no gain in it.

  Moreover, it would be the act of an animal. Unlike the scoundrel bishop in Spain, the Frenchman de Chauliac possessed an intellect worthy of preservation. And I am tired to my bones of all this death, he admitted to himself. There will have to be another way.

  He slipped his hand off the knife and sighed. “My travels are a long and sad story,” he said. “You will be poorly entertained.”

  But de Chauliac smiled and said, “I think not. Unless you have changed since we last spoke. But I see signs that some qualities persist. You are still a man of inquiry. Why else would you be carrying such a manuscript as you had when I ‘found’ you?”

  The Jew’s face took on a stark look of alarm as he remembered the book.

  “Do not fear,” de Chauliac said. “You must realize that I, of all people, would have great respect for such a piece. I will treat it with care.”

  Alejandro relaxed a bit.

  “Begin after Canterbury,” de Chauliac said. “I have been told what happened before then. Had you been in any court in Europa, you would have heard many troubadours singing of your endeavors. You have become something of a legend, you know.”

  Karle waited until it was full dark, when all the citizens of Paris, those at least with food, would be at their dinners. “Even in such evil times as these, those who patrol the streets will stop and partake of a little something,” he told Kate. “Paris retains some civilization.”

  Nevertheless, he was not fool enough to walk right up to the main door of Pillar House, where Marcel lived since beginning his term as provost; there was no sense in tempting trouble to find them. They went instead to the door near the kitchen and looked in through the window. There they saw a maid standing over the hot hearth, busily stirring the contents of an iron pot.

  Tap, tap, tap on the glass. The maid turned her head not toward the window, but toward the door instead. A look of anticipation came over her face.

  “She must have a lover,” Karle whispered to Kate. “I think we have just stumbled upon their secret signal.”

  Happily, they had, for the young girl quickly wiped her hands on her apron and smoothed her hair.

  “Make ready your knife,” Karle told Kate.

  “Karle!” she whispered in horror. “She is just a girl! She is not even as old as I am—”

  “You will do her no harm,” he said, “I only want you to scare her. I cannot hold a knife against her and reason with her at the same time. I want her to lead us to Marcel.”

  “You do not know this Marcel?”

  “I have never met the man. But we are brothers in the spirit of rebellion.”

  And before Kate had a chance to argue further, the girl was rushing to the kitchen door. She pulled it open, looked back inside once, then stepped quickly outside, anticipating an embrace.

  Before she could protest, Karle got hold of her and placed a hand over her mouth. “The knife!” he said, and Kate pulled it from her stocking, then nervously shoved the blade under the maid’s nose. The girl’s eyes widened in terror, but Kate could not help but wonder if she would notice how badly the hand that held the knife, her own, was shaking.

  “Is Marcel in the maison?” Karle demanded in a rough whisper.

  The wide-eyed girl nodded her head yes while Karle’s hand was still clamped to her mouth.

  His words came fast and urgent. “Then you will take us to him. I mean no one here any harm, but I must not be seen by anyone beyond this household and I will do what is necessary to protect myself. I will take my hand off your mouth, but if you scream, I will harm you. Do not doubt it.”

  In stunned silence, Kate did as Karle had asked her to, and pressed the tip of the knife into the small of the girl’s back. Karle took his hand off the servant’s mouth and grabbed the knife, then clasping both her small hands behind her back, he shoved her forward. “Lead the way,” he said.

  She led them up a dark and narrow flight of stairs into the torchlit maison. They followed her toward the salon, and when they crossed the threshold they saw, from behind, a man sitting in a chair. He was bent to some parchment, reading by the light of several candles.

  “Monsieur le Provoste,” the maid said timidly.

  “Oui” was Marcel’s absent response.

  “There are, uh, guests here to see you.”

  Etienne Marcel put down the letter and turned his head, and when he saw that the maid was held captive, he rose up abruptly. He faced the party square on and put one hand on the short sword at his belt. “Let go of her,” he said. “Only a coward hides behind a girl.”

  “I am no coward, sir, but a man who means you well. Yet I did not know what sort of reception I might get from you, so I thought it wise to ensure a gentle one. No one shall come to harm.” He let go of the maid’s hand, at which point the frightened girl rushed away from him and into the safe embrace of her employer.

  Karle held his arms open and showed the knife. He waved it in Kate’s direction, and she came up behind him. She took the small weapon and tucked it into her stocking again.

  “You are Marcel, I presume,” Karle said.

  Etienne Marcel, still ready to draw out the sword, nodded in affirmation. “And yourself, sir?”

  “I am Guillaume Karle.”

  Marcel took his hand off the scabbard and thrust it eagerly forward in greeting. “Mon dieu!” he said, pumping Karle’s arm up and down. “You are the last person I expected to see here!” He turned to the confused maid. “Don’t just stand there, bring wine, and plenty of it!” She ran off to do his bidding.

  Marcel motioned them toward chairs and said, “At last! God has decided that we should meet.”

  How could Alejandro describe that time, even to someone with the keen intelligence of de Chauliac? All the things he had seen and the places he had been; hell on earth—or might it have been heaven? Some wild combination of both in a life he would never have dreamed possible …

  Sensing Alejandro’s reticence, de Chauliac prodded him with a question that was certain to elicit a response. “Why did you risk bringing the child with you?”

  It snapped him out of his melancholy. “Because both she and her nurse begged me to. Both feared Isabella’s wrath, I think with good reason.” He looked into his captor’s eyes. “You were right to warn me about Isabella. I should have been more vigilant.”

  De Chauliac made a cynical chuckling sound. “Even Adam failed to recognize the serpent.”

  At this comment, Alejandro made a small, wry smile, but it quickly faded as he continued his narration. “For a time after leaving England we moved constantly; it seemed everywhere I looked there were English soldiers. I know they had many other reasons for being in France, but all I could think was that they were waiting for me. I could not allow Kate—the girl—to speak, for she would give herself away. She was a very talkative child, and charming, and it sorrowed me greatly to keep her so still.”

  “You are quite fond of her, then.”

  He sighed. “As if she were my own child. I despair of ever passing on my own spirit through a child, so she is very precious to me.”

  Under the influence of the wine, de Chauliac was far less acidic, almost sympathetic
. “But you are yet a young man,” he said, “at least much younger than I, and surely, if any of us live through this terrible time, we shall have the opportunity to spill our seed successfully. And I see no lack of heavy wombs in Paris, though God alone knows how many of those shall come to live births. But life goes on, Physician, as it always has and, God willing, always will. And though many would say that the Jews ought to perish once and for all, I do not agree. There is a place in this world for everyone and everything. Why, God saw fit to preserve a breeding pair of every animal through Noah. I sincerely doubt that it is in His plan to eliminate the Jews entirely.”

  The amity that was forming between them vanished when Alejandro heard these words. So we are animals to him. But he does not mean to have me killed. It brought him a temporary feeling of relief. But what then, he wondered as the relief passed, does he plan for me?

  “And if any Jews were to go forth and multiply, I would want them to be Jews such as yourself.”

  “Jews who do not look or act like Jews?”

  “Men of intellect, reason, and wisdom, men who understand the world and how it ought to be.”

  “The world ought to be better,” Alejandro said.

  “You are right, colleague. It seems that we are all, Christians and Jews alike, dancing in the hands of Satan as he stares down at us in evil glee. In time, I have faith that this will change.” He smiled. “But continue with your tale.”

  After another moment’s hesitation, Alejandro went on. “After the first winter, we went to Strasbourgh.”

  “Oh,” de Chauliac said with a sad shake of his head, “it was a pity what happened there.”

  “A harsher word is called for, I think. Aberration might do. But whatever one calls that tragedy, the result was that we could not stay. We came to Paris for a time, and lived in the Marais among other Jews.”

  “You were here, in Paris?”

  He nodded. “And then after a time we fled north again.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “One would be hard-pressed to name a place we did not go,” he said with a sigh. “We could hardly ride into a village and announce ourselves. ‘Attendez! Here we are, a fugitive Jew, despised and hunted by the princess of England, and the illicit daughter of King Edward, kidnapped from her cruel father’s Court at her own request.’ Who would welcome such a pair, for any reason other than to ransom us?”

  “Then how did you live? No one would take you in, surely.”

  “There was never any lack of abandoned houses. We always chose the most isolated, and we would stay only until we thought we might have been noticed. Then we would move on to the next one, carrying with us what we had, which as you know from your current possession of it, has not amounted to much.”

  De Chauliac hmphed. ”Nor was it precisely meager. You still have your gold, some of it given to you by my sainted patron, no doubt. You Jews are a frugal lot.”

  “We are, when it serves us to be.”

  “And you did not practice medicine in all that time? There are some fine tools in your bag.”

  He sighed in frustration. “Only very little.”

  De Chauliac sat back in his chair. “So you see? You did squander your gift.”

  “I passed my gifts on to the child by teaching her all that I learned myself,” he protested. “She has become a fine healer. And when help was sorely needed, I always gave it. But every time we made ourselves known, we were forced to move on. The risk of capture was much too great.”

  “I think perhaps you are too worried, at least now.” He sat forward and folded his hands together in front of his face. “Let me tell you what I have heard through my spies. For the first year you were actively hunted, especially while Clement was alive. The pontiff was naturally quite ‘disappointed’ when he heard who you really were; and though he was what some would call a Jew lover, he felt that by sending you to England he had humiliated himself. I tried my best to defend you, of course, by pointing out that you were successful in your mission. No more of the English royals died from plague. Still, he was not satisfied.”

  “So we were in danger, then.”

  “For a time. But after Clement’s death, there was only Isabella who truly carried a grudge against you—her father was far too preoccupied with the affairs of state. She was able to keep the hunt going for a few years after that, but as Edward got more involved in resuming the war, his interest in pleasing her waned.”

  “It seemed quite healthy when I was there.”

  “Oh, I believe it was. He doted on her shamelessly. But now, in truth, he is only interested in seeing Isabella married.”

  “She is yet a spinster? But she must be twenty-six or twenty-seven by now.”

  De Chauliac laughed. “Why should this surprise you? Even a royal shrew is still a shrew. She did manage to impose the continuation of the hunt for you on her brother Edward, who has been in France more often than her father. He has turned into a fearsome warrior—he is called the Black Prince now for the armor he favors. He questioned me himself about you on one of his journeys here. But his interest seemed ingenuine. It was my feeling that he pursued you only because of his sister’s insistence. They are fond of each other, for some reason.”

  “I know. And I find it curious.”

  “Indeed. Now he has given you up altogether.”

  De Chauliac saw the look of relief on Alejandro’s face. Disliking it, he added, “However, their brother Lionel is not so preoccupied with war. He is here in Paris now, with his entire household. I have been called upon to minister to his family on occasion. I have fallen out of favor with the clergy, somehow, but my services seem still to have some value to the royals.”

  He saw a look of worry welling up again and laughed lightly. “Do not fear. Lionel does not remember you. I have questioned him already, much to his great irritation. His servants came and went from time to time toward the end of your stay at Windsor, and some of them may have seen you, but Lionel was at Eltham with Gaddesdon during most of the scourge. And he did not bring his servants along on this journey.”

  “Hmm,” Alejandro said, “the inimitable Master Gaddesdon.”

  “An idiot,” de Chauliac observed blandly. “One fails to understand Edward’s faith in him.”

  Bring us proof, Gaddesdon had said when Alejandro had begged him for an audience with King Edward. Then you shall have our ear. “He did not believe me either about the rats.”

  De Chauliac flicked away the dot of meat on his fingertip and leaned forward. “Ah, yes, the rats,” he said. “Please forgive my earlier mockery. At first thought, it seemed a silly theory. But I am always willing to listen. You have my ear now.”

  “A gift not to be squandered,” Alejandro said.

  Nearly all of Paris was out on the streets to find what little cool air there was, with the notable exceptions of Etienne Marcel and Guillaume Karle, who remained inside and suffered in the steamy heat, for they had secrets that could not wait for cooler weather to be shared.

  Kate suffered with them, and was forced to warn them constantly to keep their voices low, for they were whispering at the top of their lungs and the windows were wide open.

  How quickly these two have found their common ground, she thought. They have only just made acquaintance, yet they argue with the plain talk of old cronies.

  “Navarre is just another noble,” Karle insisted, “although he calls himself king. He would be king of all France, I think, and we shall all suffer for it. He is no better than what we have now, nor substantially different.”

  “I beg to disagree, my comrade, he is a far sight better than our current monarch. Stronger, at least.”

  “I have seen the evidence of his strength. May God spare us all.”

  Marcel frowned. “He can serve us well. He can lead us against his own kind, and we would do far better with him than we would without him.”

  “He is a vicious rogue, and not to be trusted!”

  “He can be trusted to look afte
r his own interests, and all we need do to ensure our own success is to make sure that our interests are aligned with his.”

  “But how can our interests ever be concurrent? He will make himself our new master, and he will be a far crueler one than the weakling who now pretends to the throne. And he will do nothing to stop the wars, for they serve his purpose! Everyone is at war with everyone else: Jean against Edward, Navarre against the Dauphin, peasants against nobles, nobles against each other! France is in a state of anarchy such as has never been seen before. We must rise up while we have the chance, and take control!”

  “These are pretty notions, Karle, but ill-considered,” Marcel insisted. “Now think of this: If we promise to support Navarre’s uprising against the Dauphin, then the nobility will all be engaged in a battle to the death among themselves, and we will be armed and in close proximity to them! When the battles are over, we shall still be armed, and their numbers will be reduced. They will be weak, and we can strike the fatal blow.”

  Karle had heard the same plan from Kate. And though he despised the idea of furthering Navarre’s cause in order to secure his own, it seemed a sure way to put himself and his men in a good position to rise up against Navarre.

  “I must admit,” he said, “that it could work.”

  “Then, happily, we are in agreement!” Marcel cried. He motioned to the serving girl, Marie, who, having received the profuse apologies of Karle and Kate after their rough introduction, stood by ready to do her work. “Let us drink to the success of one noble over another—may they slay each other down to the last knight, and leave France to the rest of us!”