‘And look, do you see this fountain near the centre of the painting? Do you see the large stone basin in which it stands? That was one of Henry’s contributions, a fountain of wine. Free silver goblets were provided for anyone who wanted to dip into the basin and drink. Note the crowd of drunks stumbling around the rim, some of them vomiting. Here. Study them with this magnifying glass.
‘And why was this sumptuous extravaganza staged?
‘I’ll tell you. It was the age-old game of jockeying for power. The main rivals of both kings were Charles V, who was the Holy Roman Emperor, and the Protestant princes of the Netherlands and Germany. The French and the English kings hoped to bypass these threats by forging their own alliance. The more things change, the more they remain the same, but the basic rule has not changed: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
‘You understand that this was no different from today, not one whit different. Today England and France are friends with Germany, who was our deadly enemy a decade ago. Why? Because Germany is an enemy of Russia.
‘In 1520, it was Cardinal Wolsey who planned the whole extravagant circus, planned it as an act of pure seduction. He was courting France for the hand of England, he was a procurer for England, he was tricking her out like a whore in silk and gold. But at the same time he was secretly meeting with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. A mutual non-aggression pact between England and France was signed on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, but it lasted less than a year. Within months, Wolsey, who was as duplicitous as any modern politician, signed a different deal with Charles V and that was the end of French–English trust for a few hundred years.
‘In fact, even now, in spite of being allies during the war, the English and the French don’t trust each other very much.’
‘But my mother trusts you,’ Petit Loup points out. ‘And you are English.’
‘I am Catholic,’ the Jesuit says. ‘There are loyalties that transcend the boundaries of nation states.’
‘I am half American,’ Petit Loup says. ‘And half Protestant.’
‘I think you are very French and very Catholic,’ the priest replies. ‘Also your mother trusts me because two world wars have made a difference.’
‘My father says America won the war,’ Petit Loup says. ‘Without America, Hitler would have won.’
‘Papa says it was the Resistance,’ Cap protests, ‘not France, and not America, who saved us from Hitler. Papa says that France was stabbed by collaborators from inside.’
‘Ah,’ the priest says. ‘That is a very painful and complicated question and, ah, we will eventually explore it.’
‘Was Wolsey a collaborator?’ Cap wants to know.
‘That is … that was not even an intelligible question in 1520,’ Father John Gabriel says. ‘We will discuss it in due course, but not until we have covered a few earlier centuries, all of which have a bearing on these twentieth-century wars. To return to the meeting on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, that encounter was as much about royal strutting as about diplomacy. This was a time of glory for both kings. Both were aggrandising themselves with conspicuous consumption and sumptuous architecture. Château de Chambord was being built, with its double-spiral staircase designed by Da Vinci. And Hampton Court Palace was also being built – by and for Cardinal Wolsey, in point of fact, but let anyone who tries to outdo a king beware. Less than a decade later, the king had banished Wolsey and confiscated Hampton Court Palace for himself.
‘But back to 1520. Each king brought six thousand attendants to the meeting. They pitched thousands of tents. There were feasts and music and dancing and jousts and tournaments. Both kings took part in the jousts and both distinguished themselves. On impulse, a one-on-one wrestling match between the two kings was proposed. Henry was twenty-nine years old and had already been king for eleven years, and, as you have observed, Mademoiselle Melusine, he was already a man of considerable weight in all senses. François was younger, twenty-six years old, had only been king for five years, and was as frisky and arrogant as an unbroken colt. He wrestled Henry to the ground, and from the point of view of the French historians, Henry never forgave him. The alliance with France was doomed before anyone even left the Field of the Cloth of Gold.
‘That is the end of your first history lesson. Your assignment is to spend the rest of the morning examining the painting with a magnifying glass. Discuss with each other the details you find. Look for the symbol of the Tudor rose on the white silk tent. Study the platters and the food on the tables. Study the dragon flying over the Channel and tell me what you think it might mean.
‘The second part of your first assignment is to ponder this question: Would the history of France and England and the Holy Roman Empire, and indeed of Europe, have been dramatically different if Henry VIII had won the wrestling match? Or if the match had never taken place? I expect you to be able to argue your case, and to support it, with detailed evidence, and that is how we will spend the whole afternoon.
‘Tomorrow, we will discuss the wives and mistresses of these kings, and we will discuss whether women have any influence on the course of history.’
‘Of course women influence the course of history,’ Cap says.
‘Indeed, Mademoiselle Melusine? Do you think so? And what are your reasons?’
‘Queen Anne, the mother of Louis XIV, was regent of France for eight years. La comtesse told me.’
‘It is true,’ Father John Gabriel acknowledges, ‘that the queen held that title for eight years, as the mother of the infant king. But the real ruler during the Regency was Cardinal Mazarin.’
‘The Regency was full of secrets,’ Cap says. ‘La comtesse told me. Secrecy was essential to survival, la comtesse says. Your desk, Father, is a Regency desk, like the one in the salon. It has secret drawers.’
‘One of Queen Anne’s secrets,’ Father John Gabriel responds, ‘with respect to Cardinal Mazarin, was that people believed he was her lover. But perhaps it is better that I not tell you what court gossip claimed. Tomorrow, we will discuss the issue of women and power, or of women and the illusion of power, or of women and the particular kind of power they held.’
11.
In Central Park, collisions are rare on Conservatory Water but they do happen. The miniature Santa Maria is privately owned and its remote-control gizmo is held by its owner, a boy who is perhaps twelve years old. He is dressed in expensive casual clothing from Gap. The pilots of the rented boats clearly resent him and his tiny custom-built vessel. Some sort of collective decision seems to have been made in the same mysterious way in which Canada geese suddenly take off in V formation to fly thousands of miles behind a leader.
The rented boats converge on the target like iron filings moving towards a magnet. There is turbulence. There is buffeting.
The Santa Maria lists and goes suddenly under.
Cap has an instant sensation of nausea. She folds her arms tightly across her waist and pleats herself over them. She has never travelled by sea, never been on a ship, but she has a shipwreck phobia. It did not begin until she was in her thirties (until the countess received a letter about the flotilla of boats that went down in the South China Sea) but now, in recurrent nightmares, she is underwater, desperately kicking for the surface, thrashing about with her long fish tail and straining to catch the hand of someone who is drowning, someone she can never quite reach. She has watched too many documentaries of Vietnamese boat people, of vessels insanely overloaded. She no longer watches such reports. She avoids them. The watery storms and shipwreck nightmares, however, have not abated.
Life is a matter of random collisions and catastrophes, she thinks, watching the shocked eyes of the owner of the Santa Maria. Perhaps his ship was a birthday present. He has been letting it zoom around the pond with such manifest pride and pleasure. It has not even occurred to him that resentment might swamp him and capsize his boat and wreck his unalloyed joy. Cap wonders if the boy has a sense of historical doom, or if he will have one from this moment on. He has the
look of a private-school student from the Upper East Side and so probably knows that the original Santa Maria was wrecked on Christmas Day in 1492. Even the boys who have ganged up on the three-master now look subdued rather than triumphant. In fact, one of the pirates takes off his shoes, rolls up his jeans, and wades into the pond to retrieve the sunken vessel. Two of its masts are broken and the sails droop like torn wings. The buccaneer offers the wreck to its owner. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Didn’t mean to break her.’
The master of the Santa Maria will not meet her salvager’s eyes. He nods, cradles his shattered sailboat in his arms, turns away, and then runs towards Fifth Avenue. Cap suspects that he does not want to be seen crying.
Cap ponders the idea of randomness and pattern. Random catastrophes, random rescues, weird repetitions.
Every week, in the church of St Gilles, her father lit a candle for her mother. He gave thanks to the Virgin that Cap’s mother had died in a convent, surrounded by prayers and nuns. But whenever there was a loud banging on the door at night, he woke with a start and expected dire news. Sometimes he would talk in his sleep and when he did so he argued – with the nuns? with Marie-Claire? with himself? He would insist that if Cap’s mother had not died in childbirth, then she had moved from safe house to safe house until she reached the Pyrenees and Spain and the coast of Portugal and a ship called the Santa Maria. If it had not been for a storm in the Atlantic, or for a German torpedo, her ship would have reached New York instead of the afterlife. Sometimes he dreamed that she did indeed reach American shores. Sometimes he believed this on waking. It was known, it was a matter of record, that from time to time survivors of torpedoed wrecks were picked up by Allied crews.
‘Who’s that?’ Christophe le Jardinier asks, waking with a start.
‘It’s Ti-Loup’s signal,’ Cap says, sleepy. ‘I’ll let him in.’
‘No. I’ll go. Never open the door at night.’
‘Papa, if it’s not Ti-Loup, it’s Ti-Christophe getting home late.’
‘Someone saw your maman in Hendaye,’ her father says. ‘On the Spanish border.’
‘What? Who saw her? When?’
‘Just before Normandy.’
Nineteen-forty-four, Cap thinks. And where was I? If she asks, he will say: She left you with the nuns in Tours, but later, fully awake, he will remember the articles of his personal catechism: She died in childbirth. ‘Papa, I think you are still inside your dream. I’m going to open the door. Ti-Loup?’ she calls.
Ti-Loup emerges from the shadows. ‘I climbed out my window. Can I stay?’
‘Come in.’
‘Is your father all right?’
‘You woke him up from a dream. When he has bad dreams, he talks in his sleep.’
‘I am not asleep,’ her father says.
‘I don’t want you to ask me why,’ Ti-Loup says. ‘And if you do, I won’t tell you. But I won’t sleep at the chateau anymore. Can I stay?’
‘Of course you can stay,’ Cap’s father says. ‘This is your safe house.’
It becomes established illicit practice. After his mother has bid him goodnight, Petit Loup climbs out his window and makes his way to the gardener’s cottage, where he has supper for the second time. He spends the night on a palliasse in the loft – on the straw mattress where Petit Christophe used to sleep – and climbs back into his own bedroom at the chateau before dawn so the servants won’t see. Cap has to go with him. She has to crouch like a tortoise in front of his window, elbows pressed against knees. Petit Loup stands on her back, reaches for the sill, and hoists himself over.
Then he leans out. He kisses his fingertips, Cap kisses hers, and they reach and touch hands.
‘You are putting on weight,’ Cap warns him one evening as her father urges second helpings on the boy. ‘Your maman will want to know why.’
‘She knows why.’
‘You told her you are having two dinners?’
‘No. She says happiness makes the body bloom and she knows I’m happy. It’s because the Virgin Mary has answered her prayers, she says.’
Cap makes her eyes go slanty with the tips of her thumbs. ‘And because of me,’ she reminds.
Ti-Loup pulls his mouth into a gargoyle slit with his index fingers. ‘You’re here because the Virgin Mary sent you.’
‘I’m here because I do what I want. No one makes me do anything. Not even the Virgin Mary.’
‘If you don’t watch out,’ Ti-Loup warns, ‘the Virgin Mary will strike you dead.’
‘If you don’t watch out,’ Cap responds, ‘I won’t help you climb back through your window. And I won’t sneak you into Petit Christophe’s back window at Monsieur Monsard’s and you won’t be able to get into the cutting room without being seen.’
‘If you ever do that,’ Ti-Loup says, ‘I would ask the Virgin Mary to strike you dead.’
In fact, when Petit Loup turns twelve and Cap is perhaps thirteen, a curious act of transubstantiation comes to pass. The countess summons her gardener and explains that she has prepared a room in the chateau for Melusine. The room has a solid Louis XIV bed and two baroque mirrors and a charming Louis XV escritoire.
‘She is a young woman now,’ the countess explains. ‘It is not proper that she does not have her own bedroom and a chaperone.’
It comes to pass that Capucine spends the night in a four-poster bed in the chateau and Ti-Loup, unknown to his mother, sleeps in the loft in the gardener’s cottage. Ti-Loup no longer needs help to climb in or out of his window. Cap has no need whatsoever of entry by window. The countess brushes her hair every night.
The arrangement keeps both children happy.
However, Father John Gabriel is less than happy.
‘Night after night,’ he tells his primary charge, ‘I come by your room to help with your assignments. But you are never there. I begin to think you are a werewolf.’
‘I change shape at night,’ Petit Loup acknowledges gravely. ‘I am someone else after dark. But I will tell Maman that you come to my room every night. She can meet us there.’
‘There is no need to speak of this to your mother,’ Father John Gabriel says. ‘It is not of any consequence as long as your homework is done.’
There are subsidiary benefits to secret knowledge.
Father John Gabriel is a strong believer in the educational value of field trips. On Saturdays there are excursions of historical benefit: Chinon, Tours, the chateaux at Chenonceau, Amboise, Saumur, the royal abbey of Fontevraud, all so close by. These trips are made in Father John Gabriel’s car. There are vague plans to go as far as Calais and Agincourt but the countess has not yet given permission. When they are older, she says.
It transpires that Father John Gabriel has a close friend in Tours, a Dominican who has some connection with the cathedral. The Jesuit and the Dominican are close friends who like to spend time in scholarly research and discussion. The Jesuit tutor is amenable to an arrangement proposed by his students: that three Saturdays of every four, le vicomte Gwynne Patrice will spend the day with a friend at some unspecified place in the village of St Gilles, that Melusine, personal ward of the countess, will spend the day wandering dreamily through the Musée des Beaux Arts in Tours, studying the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century paintings, visually memorising them. Sometimes she will sit in front of a single painting for an hour at a time. She is particularly fascinated with a seventeenth-century canvas by Claude Vignon. The painting is called Croesus Demanding Tribute from a Peasant. The peasant could be her father: gnarled hands, fingers twisted from hard work, a gentle face weary and luminous with a kind of sublime resignation but a form of resignation that also suggests irony. The worst will go on happening, the face says, and behold what it does to the tyrant.
Bored, comfortable, ruthless, impervious, indifferent, the obscenely rich Croesus lounges in his sumptuous chair, counting the spill of coins from the old peasant’s small leather purse. Croesus has the face of a Gestapo officer who expects betrayal as a matter of course.
>
Goodness will outlast him, the face of the peasant says.
Three Saturdays in every four, Father John Gabriel in his Citroën picks up Cap and Ti-Loup at the entrance to the chateau. All three wave to the countess as they leave. Father John Gabriel stops in the village square in St Gilles for a pitcher of wine and a croquemonsieur at the Lion d’Or. While he is there, Cap visits her brother and takes Ti-Loup with her. They do not enter the butcher’s establishment from the street. They do not cross the courtyard. Rather, they follow the drainage ditch and narrow footpath from the back of the Lion d’Or to the back of la boucherie. Cap knocks on her brother’s window and he lets them climb into his private quarters. No one can see them from courtyard or street. Petit Christophe offers them lime tea and madeleines and they exchange a week’s worth of news. Then Cap climbs back out of the window and makes her way to the Lion d’Or and on to Tours, chaperoned by her tutor.
Petit Christophe has his own key and his own private door that leads directly from his small apartment to the cutting room. Under his tutelage, Ti-Loup studies the art of the boning hook and knife. He is acquiring a sixth sense, an instinct for the passageways between muscle and joint. He is learning to navigate inter-bone alleyways with his knife. He knows how to separate tenderloin from flank and tenderloin from rump without ever scraping a bone.
‘Sometimes,’ Petit Christophe tells him, ‘there’s no avoiding the boning saw. After the animals are killed and hung in the slaughter yard, there’s no other way to get halves and quarters. You have to saw through the spine. Monsieur Monsard does that; I won’t do it. Still, when the forequarters and hindquarters are brought inside, there’s no other way to separate the neck from the spine.’ He demonstrates this, but he uses the saw very rarely. ‘It’s a matter of finding the canals,’ he says. ‘A matter of knowing the codes to the sluice gates, the locks. The knife floats through them.’
‘Did Monsieur Monsard teach you this?’
‘In the beginning, yes. But then the carcasses taught me. I’m a better butcher than he is and the customers know it. So now he leaves the butchering to me.’
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