Tales from the Vatican Vaults: 28 extraordinary stories by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Garry Kilworth, Mary Gentle, KJ Parker, Storm Constantine and many more

by David V. Barrett

  And oh, what a tumultuous time those two had. Both of them lusty and full of life, but Henri, hot-headed and a decade younger than Aliénor, was no match for her intelligence and her strong will. Five sons and three daughters they had, and thoroughly enjoyed the making of them. They were better matched by far than Aliénor had ever been with her first husband. But Henri was proud, and stubborn, and had explosive rages. Two such strong people could not stay in harmony for long.

  *

  Our old opponent Bernard de Clairvaux would have been appalled, had he still lived. On the south side of the bridge in London were all the entertainments not deemed fit for the great city; Southwark was one long street of inns and ale-houses. In the shadow of the Priory of St Mary Overie prostitutes plied their trade, alone or in brothels, under licence from the Bishop of Winchester, whose palace was here. And who should have drawn up the legislation for this than the Archdeacon, soon to be Archbishop, of Canterbury, one Thomas Becket, who had shown no interest in me or any woman when a youth of twenty in Paris.

  My queen told me of her sadness that these women, the Winchester Geese, from whom the bishop profited, were not allowed Christian burial in consecrated ground when they, almost inevitably, died young. Such was the hypocrisy of the Church.

  *

  Some lauzenguers hinted that Aliénor was in some way responsible for the death of Henri’s mistress, Rosamund Clifford. There is no truth in this; my queen knew her husband’s appetites better than any, and never objected to his having mistresses – he was a king, after all. But Henri openly flaunted Rosamund, and that I found offensive. I claim credit for the line later used by Gerald of Wales, that she was not rosa mundi but rosa immundi, not rose of the world but rose of unchastity. The line stuck, and Rosamund took herself off to a nunnery, dying shortly afterwards.

  In any case, while Henri was enjoying his fair Rosamund, Aliénor moved back to her beloved Poitiers where she hosted her Courts of Love, formal debates in poetry between two troubadours, or between a troubadour and his lady, on the many variations of love – concealed, expressed, withheld, given, forbidden, taken, shared.

  Patience, husband – don’t be annoyed

  Tomorrow you’ll have me, but my lovers tonight

  Don’t say a word!

  Patience, husband – don’t be annoyed

  The night’s short, soon you’ll have me

  Once my lovers have taken their pleasure.

  These duelling debates were what most of the lords and ladies saw, and many of the troubadours too. They were the open show, and Andreas Capellanus later wrote of them in De Amore, his treatise on love. Most of it was make-believe; it was a necessary smokescreen.

  If the Church had known, Alis thought, Aliénor would have been excommunicated at best, and probably far worse. For in her fifteen years as the Queen of the Franks, married to the monkish Louis, then more than twice as long married to Henri before she became Queen Regent to her favourite but most pious son Richard, Aliénor paid only diplomatic lip-service to the Church and its Christ, as she did with every other political power. Bernard de Clairvaux must have guessed this, but he died just a year after she married Henri, removing her biggest threat from the Church.

  She went to Mass and said her prayers, as did everyone, but in her heart Aliénor followed her grandfather’s southern attitude of convivença in every way: not just conviviality in the love of music and dance, but the free-flowing converse between those of different beliefs, people living, working, talking and loving together wherever they were from, however they worshipped their gods. That was how she had learned of the Art.

  Aliénor was Countess of Poitiers and Duchess of Aquitània, but she was also Queen of England. In the early years of their marriage she had run that country while Henri was on campaign, and even at this time, when they were more estranged, there were times when she needed to be ruling and judging and administering on behalf of her husband at the heart of the Angevin world, here at Chinon. And after days of what could be such tiresome tasks, she took pleasure in the company of troubadours, and I with her.

  Some loved with us; some joined their will with us for one purpose or another; many just wrote and sang and played their songs, and their gift of pleasure was not any the less. Bernat de Ventadorn, Bertran de Born, Peire Vidal, Raimbaut de Vaqueyras and more, and the best of the trobairitz also: Maria de Ventadorn, Azalais de Porcairages, Countess Beatritz de Dia, so many others. Some sang of God; some of springtime; some of the twisted tongues of lauzenguers; some of battle; some of courtliness; and some of the joys of love.

  Her lovely young body does not deceive

  The more beautiful she becomes

  As you take away her clothes

  The more eager you become

  Her breast turns night to day

  While to see lower still

  Would lighten the heart of any man.

  Chinon: the Plantagenêt treasury and the château which Henri largely built and where he was to die cursing his sons, his body stripped of its clothes and jewels by his servants before being taken to l’abbaye de Fontevraud a short ride away.

  But fifteen years before that, after their sons’ rebellion against him, he had imprisoned his queen here in the château, in the cold, unwelcoming Tour du Moulin, before taking her back to England in captivity. Ah, those were dark years for my lady, before Henri died of his piles and Richard became king.

  *

  Henri’s oldest surviving son Henri had been crowned as the Young King alongside his father, but it was an empty title. As the young Henri and his brothers grew into manhood, they wanted more than their father would give them: land and its revenue, and the power that comes from both. And Aliénor saw a way of curbing her husband by strengthening her sons; she drew power through the Art to support the young king and his brothers against their father. If only it could have succeeded, but too many others were involved, with their own agendas. If young Henri had defeated his father and won his domains, he would have lost half of them to grasping nobles in both France and England in payment for their support.

  It was a rebellion doomed to failure, and my lady’s greatest error. The young Henri was only eighteen, and he was the oldest and most experienced of the three brothers, while their father was a skilled strategist and a hardened campaigner. Aliénor’s youngest son John, just a lad of seven or eight, rode with his father. Henri’s favourite, he was the cause of the whole revolt, when his father gave him three castles which belonged by right to the young Henri. Richard and Geoffrey sided with their elder brother, and Aliénor allowed her love for her older sons, especially Richard, to overcome for once her common sense, and supported them against her husband not just politically but with powers none of the rebels knew anything of.

  But Henri had spies everywhere. His fury at his wife’s betrayal turned to horror at the blasphemy when, as pious as Louis though by no means as monkish, he discovered the source of her power. He could have thrown her to the Church, but accusations of heresy are double-edged, and the risks to himself and his heritage would have been too great. Instead he had her arrested and imprisoned here at Chinon, then taken back to England. She would spend the next fifteen years confined at places of his choosing, away from any exercise of power, political or magical.

  Sometimes Alis had been able to spend time with her lady – when she was confined elsewhere than the harsh old castle at Sarum, and when she was let out from time to time when Henri needed her by his side – but increasingly she acted as her hidden envoy, teaching the Art to troubadours and trobairitz in Anjou and Aquitània.

  At least Aquitània went to Richard, her favourite; he was its duc for ten years before succeeding his father to the English throne.

  *

  And now Aliénor is free again, freed even before Richard sent the order, and Queen Regent of England while her warrior son is off on crusade. Her fifteen years of imprisonment have not weakened her will. And I too am free (though our bond was never servitude), as Aliénor, k
nowing my dislike of England, has bestowed on me a manor near Chinon to sustain me in my remaining years. But she also gifted me this little house on the Île du Bois, that I know so well, for me to stay when I am in the town.

  From the town I still cross half over the strong stone bridge that Henri built, as I have done for years, and down the steps to the île, and along the path through the trees, and here, in the house built of white tufa, my own tiny château, I recall the grand Courts of Love in Poitiers; and I recall too those nights of love here, with Giraut who first taught us so long ago, with those troubadours to whom Aliénor taught the secrets, with trobairitz, and sometimes with Aliénor herself. She is now near seventy, and I not far behind, but the life-force we have been granted through our practice of love has sustained us well, and will, I believe, for some years to come.

  I use a cane to walk, but we are no dried-up sticks of old women. Giraut de Besièrs is long gone, but the troubadour singing at the château this evening will by tradition stay here on the île, in this small white house. And tonight and in the weeks to come I shall teach him what I learned with my lady Aliénor of the Art of Love; and together through our will we shall raise the power. I have written down my scattered thoughts for his benefit, for he is young and may need to know that today follows from our yesterdays, from our failures as well as our successes. Reading it through, jumbled as it is, I think I may make a fair copy to give to my queen as a reminder of my love for her through all the times we spent together. There was much unhappiness, but there was also so much joy.

  Aliénor taught me what she learned for herself, a truth that others have lived before us, including poor Pierre Abélard. Do what you will, that shall be all of the law; for love is the law, love and will working together. It is in the Bible, in the letter of Paul to the Romans: ‘Love fulfils the law.’ It is in the teachings of one of the Church Fathers, Augustine: ‘Love, and what you will, do.’ And it is the heart of our song. The power of love, and of love-making, is the strongest power of all.

  Ω

  The château and town of Chinon fell to the French just a year after Queen Eleanor’s death in 1204, her last son John Lackland (Sans Terre) proving incapable of holding on to much of his parents’ land. There is no record of Alis, or whether she still lived there.

  Troubadours continued singing of divine and carnal love for another century; another Giraut, Giraut Riquier (1230–92) was perhaps the last of them.

  The Vatican librarians cross-referenced this document to the original texts held in the Vaults of two Renaissance books. In Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: The Strife of Love in a Dream, published in Venice in 1499, Poliphilo follows Thelemia, representing will or desire, in the pursuit of erotic fulfilment.

  Perhaps Alis left a seed of Eleanor’s antinomial teaching to grow in Chinon; François Rabelais, born there at the end of the fifteenth century, wrote in his satire on religion Gargantua and Pantagruel that the only rule of the Abbey de Thélème was ‘fay çe que vouldras’ (‘Do what thou wilt’).

  But the idea of sex-magic, the raising of power through love and will, did not surface again until the mid-nineteenth century with the American esotericist Paschal Beverly Randolph, whose teachings worked their way into a small German group, the Ordo Templi Orientis, which was later taken over by the English magician Aleister Crowley.

  1355

  In the Hall of the Great Council in the Doge’s Palace in Venice there are portraits of all the doges – except one. In the place where his portrait should be is the framed painting of a black shroud. In the records of the Council of Ten, the body responsible for the security of the Republic of Venice, the relevant page is blank except for the words, ‘Non scribatur’ (‘Let it not be written’).

  The discovery of the following account in the Vaults shows that it was, in fact, written – and that it was a story not just of political power but of magical power.

  The Dragon Chain

  Cherith Baldry

  Fantino Falier hurried up the stairs of the Palazzo Ducale, anxious not to be late for dinner with his uncle, the Doge. He slipped inside the Sala del Scudo, relaxing to see that his haste was unnecessary: several petitioners stood waiting, and Marin Falier had not yet made his appearance.

  Most of the men were clustered around a large cabinet of curios, which the Doge had recently had removed from the Red Room of the Palazzo Falier to his new residence in the Palazzo Ducale. The cabinet doors were open for display, with one of the Doge’s servants nearby to keep a wary eye on the treasures.

  Fantino had helped with the transport and the arrangement. Pride of place was given to the scrolls and artefacts brought back to Venice from the East by Marco Polo, and given to the Doge years before by the great traveller. The touch of such rarities had intrigued Fantino: the boxes of wood and leather; the gold and silver jewellery; most impressive the great silver neck chain incised with the sinuous curves of rampant dragons.

  As Fantino headed towards the knot of petitioners the doors from the Doge’s private apartments burst open. Marin Falier stormed into the hall, his furred robe belling out behind him, his white beard seeming to bristle with anger. Ignoring the petitioners he strode across to Fantino, brandishing a sheet of parchment that he held crumpled in his fist.

  ‘Look at that!’ he exclaimed, thrusting the sheet at Fantino. ‘Look at the sentence passed on that young puppy Michele Steno. Imprisoned for two months . . . banished for a year! I would have strung him up by the thumbs!’

  Fantino smoothed out the crumpled parchment and glanced quickly over it: the decree of the Council as the Doge had described it. Fantino remembered his uncle’s fury on the night he had discovered his chair of office plastered over with young Steno’s scurrilous epigrams. No wonder he’s raging now, after such a light sentence.

  Glancing up from the document, Fantino saw that his uncle’s wife, Aluica, had followed him into the hall. She was dressed for the dinner in a gown of deep crimson velvet, embroidered with gold, her heavy chestnut hair netted in a headdress smouldering with rubies.

  ‘My lord, calm yourself,’ she murmured, laying a hand on the Doge’s arm. ‘There is no need to—’

  Doge Falier shook her off with an irritable gesture. ‘No need? It is your reputation he besmirched, as well as my own. The Council hold me in contempt – me, their Doge! And you tell me to calm myself!’

  Aluica cast an anguished glance towards Fantino. ‘True, my lord,’ she said. ‘But here . . . in public . . .’ She gestured toward the petitioners who stood staring in mingled shock and apprehension.

  Marin Falier swung around, as if he had noticed them for the first time. ‘Out!’ he snapped. ‘All of you, out!’

  Most of the petitioners scurried for the door, looking glad to go. Two men remained. One of them was Giovanni Gradenigo, Aluica’s kinsman; Fantino realised that he too must have been invited to dinner. The other was Filippo Calendario, the architect in charge of the rebuilding work that presently plagued the palazzo.

  ‘What do you want?’ Doge Falier asked waspishly. ‘Don’t come to me with your petitions. I clearly have no power within the state.’

  Calendario stepped forward and bowed to the Doge with one hand on his breast. He was a big man, his muscular build the evidence of his early days as a stonemason. His broad face was topped with a shock of thick hair, greying as if stone dust sifted in it, and his hands were covered with tiny scars from the chisel.

  ‘I came to show you the new set of plans, Your Serenity,’ he said, gesturing with a roll of parchment. ‘But this is perhaps not the best time . . .’

  ‘It is not,’ the Doge replied. ‘Wait on me here in the morning.’

  Calendario bowed again and began to withdraw, then checked as if something had just occurred to him. ‘If you feel you lack power,’ he said, ‘then I know a man who might be able to aid you.’

  Marin Falier’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘What man? What can any man do for me?’

  ‘It’s best you meet him, Your
Serenity,’ the architect replied. ‘I could bring him with me tomorrow when I come with the plans.’

  The Doge hesitated for a moment, then gave a curt nod. ‘Very well. Do so.’

  He watched as Calendario left and closed the door behind him. Then he led the way into his own private rooms.

  Aluica followed, escorted on either side by Fantino and Gradenigo. Glancing agitatedly from one to the other, she began in a low voice. ‘I do not like this. I beg you, kinsmen, be here tomorrow to meet this man. I fear what my lord the Doge may do when he is in this mood.’

  Fantino nodded agreement, while Gradenigo simply lifted Aluica’s hand and kissed it. Aluica breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I thank you, dear friends. It may be that not only I, but the whole of Venice will be in your debt.’

  *

  Fantino arrived at the Palazzo Ducale on the following morning to find Filippo Calendario already there. At his side was a small man, dark and wiry, wearing a seaman’s cap which he pulled off as Calendario introduced him to the Doge.

  Donna Aluica and Giovanni Gradenigo stood nearby, both looking anxious. With a courteous nod to his uncle, Fantino went to join them.

  ‘This is Bertuccio Israello,’ the architect said. ‘He has travelled to many lands, and seen many strange wonders.’