Between Two Fires (9781101611616) (42 page)

What was the name of his brother’s sad little town? St. Martin-something? It was a bother, but it would be worth it. He could see Matthieu’s hands turning the tap, Matthieu’s eyes lighting up when he saw the color of the vintage coming out of the spout, Matthieu’s sad, grateful smile exaggerating the lines around those eyes. It made him feel warm enough to face going upstairs. One more goblet of something strong and he would crawl in beside the belly-sleeper, moving as lightly as a mosquito on the skin in hopes he would not wake him and be handled.

The marketplace off the rue de La Vielle Fusterie was nearly deserted. It was still too early. The military men who had been filling the city
stayed up late doing what soldiers do in towns where they are not known, and they had set Avignon’s hours back even further; he had passed two squires heading back across the Pont St. Bénézet who looked as though they had not yet gone to sleep. Now that the monks had all died, nobody rose before Terce anymore, and most waited for midday.

The cardinal had left the house, and now Robert had sneaked out for a vial of the cedar oil he loved to smell on himself—the pope had called for a grand feast tonight, another whoring feast, and he hoped to make good impressions all around—but the oil merchant’s stall was empty. It was hard to know who was dead and who was simply out of things.

The swarthy little man who sold wine from the pope’s vineyards was doing a good business, his loader rolling barrel after barrel under the emblem of the crossed keys, but the other wine sellers had closed up shop. Nothing was coming from Beaune or Auxerre but fantastical stories, and most of the vineyards near Mont Ventoux had also gone still. This year’s harvest was dying on the vine, and last year’s was nearly gone.

There just weren’t enough people left to work.

Except in Pope Clement’s vineyards.

He was a man who got things done.

Robert missed his days, only three years gone, working as cubicular to Pope Clement, who wanted no more from Robert than his help getting dressed, the lighting and snuffing of candles, and a little conversation when he couldn’t sleep.

Everything had gone to hell since the Holy Father had made a gift of him.

With no oil to show for his walk across the bridge, Robert was determined to find some satisfaction. In the early evening he would have to look at the old man’s disappointed smile as he failed to express a profound enough opinion on some religious matter, the smile that reminded him he was prized for his beauty, not his competence. He would have a few more hours until then, while the cardinal signed his papers and rattled his rings in the palace. The cardinals did little work, as far as he had ever seen, their duties spiritual rather than
temporal; it was the apostolic secretaries and chancellors, and even the pontiff himself, who shouldered the real work at the palace.

Cardinals mostly discussed things, like some troop of self-important gossips in bright red robes and wide red hats. Sometimes one would go off as legate to this or that city, and could be gone a year or more, but in Avignon they sat on cushioned benches and talked about whether women went to the same Heaven as men, or if the queen of Naples had really strangled her boy-toad of a husband. They talked about Cola di Rienzo’s thuggish uprising in Rome, as if they still had any business with that city that the papacy had divorced, or as if they meant it when they talked about the pope returning there, or as if they even had an Italian among them anymore now that Colonna had died of the Pest. They sat drowsing through canon lawsuits, saving their better selves for the evening’s diversions. They waited for the pope to die so they could wall themselves in to squabble about which one of them would take his hat, and what favors he’d do to get it. They welcomed important men to their gardens and received gifts. They dallied with lovers far too attractive for them.

As much as he held them in contempt, Robert envied them more.

He often looked at his hands and wondered how they would look in fine white gloves, and rings of emerald and tiger’s eye over those gloves.

Since the marketplace had more cats than people in it, he would have to find another way to kill the hour or two he dared to stay gone from the cardinal’s house.

So he went to the apartment of the pope’s second falconer, a red-haired, smiling boy whose moss-stuffed bed crunched with dried lavender; he had a woman in that bed but, seeing who was coming up his stairs, woke her, sent her on her way, and put two shirts down over the stain they had left.

The cardinal’s man was a rarer guest.

And a prized one.

“I know you value yourself highly,” the cardinal said, as Robert counted his teeth with his tongue to prevent him from fully hearing
the old man’s words and letting his face betray his thoughts. “But I don’t want you speaking tonight unless you are spoken to, and then it shall be to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No,’ followed of course by a few respectful words. Yes, my lord. Yes, Your Eminence. No, I have enough bread.”

“Yes, Your Eminence.”

“Have you eaten anything?”

“No, Your Eminence.”

“Well, get some figs or something in you. It won’t do for you to seem greedy at table. Vincent, bring some figs.”

The boy who had been watching all of this while waiting to help the cardinal undress gladly left the room.

Three…four…five…

“Furthermore, the tables of the Grand Tinel shall be full of knights, and highly placed ones. You won’t be sitting near any, but try not to…encounter them. They’ll hear your proclivities in your speech and hate you for it.”

The cardinal had imitated Robert at
proclivities in your speech
, and it stung. Despite his stately way of stamping out syllables, the old Limoges cunt had the same proclivities.

His father’s face leapt into his head, and he nearly squinted.

Twelve…thirteen…fourteen

“Why are you pushing your lower lip out at me like that? Are you one of the Holy Father’s camels?”

“No.”

“No, what?”

“No, Pierre.”

The older man pinched the younger man’s cheek just a little harder than was friendly.

“Not until the hat’s off.”

“No. Your Eminence.”

Robert Hanicotte entered the Grand Tinel for what must have been the thirtieth time in his life, but the great, barrel-vaulted room never
failed to take his breath away. So many torches burned on their iron sconces and so many candles of the best wax glowed on the trestle tables that it was possible to make out faces even at the far end of the hall, where the pope would soon occupy his throne, near which a quartet of servants stood, and over which a canopy of crushed velvet the color of a shadow on wine hung, tasseled with braids of cloth-of-gold. He craned his head up to look at the false night above him; a cloth of gloaming blue covered the barrel ceiling, studded with gold stars only man would have measured out so uniformly. The steward showed him to his bench, next to the cardinal; eighteen of them were here, like vicious jabs of red in the mostly blue room. He took his seat facing the door he had just entered and watched the other guests file in.

The room got louder as it filled with knights and minor kings. He noticed that very few ladies came with these men, which made him wonder what entertainments the invitations hinted at. The youngest of these was a big fellow, handsome in a soft-chinned way, attended by a page in Spanish red. What made him stand out, however, was his quiet manner. His sobriety and bearing belied his youth.

The steward guided him right, toward the pope’s cathedra and high table, and on they marched. He kept expecting them to stop, but this man was placed only two seats down from the pontiff.

“Your Eminence, may I ask who it is that just entered, seated very close to the Holy Father?”

The cardinal smiled his weary smile.

“The man sitting just next to the pope is a Valois, cousin to the king. But he’s too old for you to ask after, isn’t he?”

“I was just…”

“Yes, I know what you were just. The one who caught your eye is the Comte d’Évreux, future king of Navarre. A sycophant and a coward with a capable younger brother everyone hopes he’ll promote by dying. Any more questions?”

Robert looked down.

“Are you hungry?”

“No, Your Eminence.”

“Good.”

“Brothers, friends, honored guests,” the pope began, standing before his cathedra of carved oak and gold leaf. “I welcome you all to the Feast of the Warriors of Our Lord.”

As per the commands of his physician, the Holy Father sat between two great copper braziers, the brightest fires in the room, which cast twin shadows on the walls of the Tinel, shadows that moved forward as he did.

Robert loved to hear Clement VI speak—his every word seemed an artisanal gift selected especially for the listener and, with the weight of his office behind him, seemed also to suggest an intimacy not only with the man, but with God. Robert was too far away to see the lines at the corners of the pontiff’s eyes, but he knew the power those lines had to punctuate the Holy Father’s frequent smiles. His hands scooped the air as he spoke, like an Italian’s hands, but gently, as though they were playing in water. When Pope Clement turned his attention on you, he seemed at once to overrule every churchman who had made God seem stern, and to forgive them their misunderstanding of grace. He also seemed to know your foibles, and that your virtues so far outweighed these that the Lord scarcely noted them. He forgave his own foibles with equal abandon. Clement was a pope of light penance, short pilgrimage, and stunning feasts, and his smile illuminated a far wider path to Heaven than you had feared to find.

If Robert stared at him with filial love, he was not alone.

Clement’s voice flowed into the Tinel like mulled wine.

“For gathered in this hall are men beloved of the Lord for the charity of arms; when men take up the sword to further their own ends, they spill Christ’s blood anew; but when they take up arms for His bride, the church, they heal His five wounds, and this is the profoundest charity. For too long now have Christian kings warred amongst themselves, each seeking to enrich his realm by impoverishing
another. It is no accident that this killing Pest has followed wars, and that wars have followed famine; at each turn have we been shown, to greater and greater degrees, the displeasure of the Father whose Son lies abandoned, His Cross and His Crèche tread upon by those who will not drink his offered blood. I speak, of course, of the Turk, whose bloody crimes against the friends of peace are reviled in every decent land. In my left hand, I hold a letter from Edward, king of England and ruler of the Aquitaine. In my right, I hold a letter from Phillip, by God’s grace king of France. Both letters, sworn to in the presence of bishops, pledge the crowns of England and France to a mutual peace, with one aim: Jerusalem, City of the Lord. Jerusalem, the holiest stone in the earthly crown. Even now the shipyards in Marseille ring with hammers. Let the believers in the lies of Mahomet tremble. We shall take Jerusalem back.”

At this, the knights beat their goblets on the painted tables before them. One shouted,
“Deus vult!”
and another joined him, and soon the Grand Tinel rang with
“God wills it!”
When the echo faded, the pontiff continued.

“The first ships will sail for Cyprus on Christmas Day.”

Again they cheered.

“And,” the pontiff said, stepping forward and opening his hands, “another matter concerns us. Our late words in defense of a certain quarter were, we now believe, in error. Many men, wiser men than we once thought, have said that we cannot drive the rat from the granary while the mouse steals in the pantry. I tell those very few of you who wear crowns or sit near them to ready yourselves and your kingdoms in secret; soon we shall recall our bull,
Sicut Judaeis
, in defense of the Hebrew race, and issue another which shall grant any Christian whatsoever the right to turn his hand against any Jew, and to take from such whatever goods he desires, even his house and chattel. Very soon now, from the feast day of Saint Martin of Tours, the murder of a Hebrew shall no more be a sin than the hunt of a stag. Remember this word,
stag
. For some of you shall soon have cause to love this word.

“In His holy name, and to His holy purpose, let us pull the weeds, both far and near, that have too long choked His garden.

“Yet I shall speak no more, for hunger makes men deaf.

“Let us eat.”

Robert was disturbed at the thought of harm coming to the Jews of Avignon, who seemed a docile and clever people, and who were undeniably among the greatest artisans of Provence.

Yet he allowed the warmth in his heart to etch a small smile on his face. The pope’s words had so affected him that he felt, perhaps for the first time in his life, a part of something immense and wonderful.

THIRTY-ONE