Muse (19 page)

Once through the city gate, we merged with harlots who had been hauled out of brothels in the Bourg Neuf and the rue de la Madeleine couchée, where for years they had gone about their business comfortably, befriending clerics in the papal court and paying a tax to the city marshal. As we were driven up the rue de la Curaterie, Conmère began to lag. We were now at the rear with only a single sergeant behind us. When a vespers bell sounded, Conmère spat, cursed, pointed to the thunderclouds, and accused
the black pope
of hideous evil. The sergeant went after her, calling her an old poule, a vieille sorcière, and kicked her to make her stumble. A cornered animal, she cursed him in the old
tongue. My thoughts were also raving, fed equally by despair and rage. What if the same darkness rivered through me and was called forth not by vision, but by a madness like Conmère’s?

We caught up to the group of harlots. At the cross streets, the wind clawed at shutters and hammered doors. The first peal of thunder sounded and I shoved Conmère into a cellar behind a canvas portière. Perrette was leading us like a flagship, her hair and laughter flying in the wind, by the time we reached the Change. The night was slippery with menace, but not slippery enough to keep the poor inside. Behind us, keeping their distance, was a flux of curious people. Some of them carried burnt olive branches to invoke Saint Barbara, whose night this was, to repel the approaching thunderclouds.

Here at the Change, where the grandes rues joined like spokes into a hub, dividing the city into seven wedge-shaped parishes, the city marshal was waiting for us. He jerked his sword up and down to divide the captives into seven groups, one for each parish. This done, he demonstrated what he required of his sergeants by catching Perrette by the hair, calling for a lantern, and pouring the lamp fuel over her. She gave me a toothy smile as she was marched out by two men who kept her at sword’s length to avoid getting fuel on their own clothes. She threw her head back, laughing, but as she reached the corner leading to Saint Pierre, I saw her struggling against her captors.

The city marshal ordered his men to march the seven groups outwards from the hub, depositing a fuel-soaked harlot at every bell-tower. Each was to ring the bell to ward off thunder. If lightning struck her, she would go up in flames as a deterrent to the advancing gale. This supreme assault upon the vengeful storm began at once, with the men-at-arms hissing like drovers as they whipped out their herds of women.

My group, the smallest, was the last to be driven out. We were pushed north into the parish of Saint Étienne. At each bell-tower along the way, no matter how broken or unshapely, whether it rose from chapel, friary, or mansion, one of the sergeants doused a harlot
with fuel, pressed a blade into her back, and ordered her up the winding stairs. I had just been singled out by a sergeant with a drawn sword, when I heard a scream and spun around to see a bright shout of flame. One woman had been drenched in fuel before the lamp was fully out and had instantly caught fire. The folk bellowed their approval, claiming her incineration as proof of sorcery. But had her death mollified the storm? It was unlikely, for the thunderclaps were getting closer and the first stroke of lightning split the sky in half.

My sergeant-at-arms marched me towards Notre-Dame cathedral, my hood torn, my hair scattered by the wind. As we passed the Pope’s palace, the row of guards stood ready with their poleaxes, each in his cuirass, steepled helmet, and distinctive nose-piece. A guardsman stepped from the ranks with an ugly smile, his falcon nose-guard as familiar as his leathery face. The Falcon halted my sergeant, pointed at me, belted out an order, then pointed at Notre-Dame cathedral. The sergeant refused to relinquish me. He wanted the satisfaction of escorting me himself.

We started up again. This time I had two blades at my back instead of one. Perched on its outcropping of rock, Notre-Dame-des-Doms was taking the brunt of the northerly. This was the Pope’s own church, the first to sound the angelus bell. While the two men argued about who was in charge, I walked ahead to the church porch, unhooked the lantern, and extinguished it myself, sparing them the trouble. We were now without light to see by. I doused myself with the lamp oil like a willing scapegoat, but spilled most of the foul-smelling liquid onto the ground instead. The sergeant prodded me into the narthex, staying clear of my oily clothing, leaned against the wall, and gestured to the bell ropes. They hung down the hollow chimney so the canons could spare their legs by ringing the small bells from below, but when I grasped a rope, the Falcon sneered. He unbuckled his cuirass to drop it on the pavingstones, then forced me into the corkscrew stairway. Two hundred steps led upwards to the highest bell of Avignon. I knew
because I had once defied curfew to climb them with Francesco to view the city spread like a splendid future before us.

A step and a jab from behind with his dagger, a step and a blow. There were now just two of us, the Falcon and me. Before we had gone up fifty stairs, he trod on my skirt deliberately to crash me down. His dagger fell, clanging far below, and he was atop me, pushing my skirts out of his way. However, the stairwell was tight and he was having trouble manœuvring his heavy frame into position. These were fortified stairs, which curved to the left around the pillar to cripple a right-handed swordsman attacking from below. If he drew his sword, it would hit the centre pole before it struck me. When his weight shifted, I thrust him backwards, knocking him down three steps. Then I scrambled up the staircase, circled past the minor bells, and aimed towards the largest, the one the folk called the Iron Pope.

At the landing, I paused to ease the stitch in my ribs and surveyed the great, greedy, angry city—Avignon. It was a city with as many lawyers as churchmen, a city full of assassins and cutthroats. One of those cutthroats would soon emerge from the stairwell beside me. There was no need for the Falcon to hurry, for the only direction I could go was up. I scaled the ladder-stairs inside the spire and stepped onto the narrow platform that surrounded the giant bell. Up here, the wind was gusting spitefully, changing directions with such force that I could scarcely stand upright. The spire itself was swaying, no doubt the reason the canons preferred to ring the small bells from below. I knotted my skirts to keep them from flying, supported my back against the grille-work, and spread my feet, waiting for the bell rope to swing towards me so I could grab it without plunging down the chimney.

Far below, the mass of people travelling along the main arteries was a writhing, sinuous being. The maelstrom of bodies mirrored the dark, swirling waters of the Rhône. I thought I could hear Perrette ringing Saint Pierre’s bell. Several towers around it were already blazing, but the sacrifice of these harlots had not appeased the thunderstorm. With
each roll of thunder, the lightning forked closer, and I was clinging to the tallest spire of Babylon, the one most likely to attract its wrath.

Necks craned, fingers pointed, and the mob spotted me on my swaying roost. I gripped the grille-work as a lightning bolt jagged past, missing Notre-Dame but attacking Saint Pierre in a blow of light. Saint Pierre’s bell clanged fiercely, then flames erupted from the tower. If Perrette had made it to the top to shout her challenge to the thundering skies, she had been silenced. The mob roared, adding her to the count of dead sorcières.

I had no time to pray for her, because the rope swung towards me. I caught it and pulled the bell for all my life was worth. The biggest bell in Avignon, its peals were deafening. I rang to frighten off the devil I did not know and to summon the God I knew too well—the God who had taken my mother and my stillborn infants, the God who created whoring popes and vicious guards. I rang to tell Him to come to get me if He dared. If I was going to die, I would blaze out in a spectacular way, flaming into an inferno.

Another bolt jagged across the sky, lighting up the Falcon, who had arrived on the platform across from me. My robe stank of lamp oil, but he had absorbed almost as much fuel from pressing himself against me. I watched him wonder where the next bolt would come from and saw him turn—his surprise making him almost human—as a tongue of lightning licked his shoulder, igniting him. Kindled by fire, he fell backwards through the open arch. I heard the cries of the mob below and imagined what they saw: a harlot burning all the way down, her arms and legs convulsing, her brains boiling inside the helmet of her skull.

If the folk thought me dead, I would prove them wrong. Feet braced, I yanked the rope backwards and forwards in time to the breath racking up and down my ribs. I pulled and pulled, almost tearing my arms from their sockets, until at last the sergeant tapped my shoulder with his blade. He was teetering on the thundered, broken platform and his moving lips told me that I had rung so hard and so long that
my bell was the only one still pealing. The noise had deafened me, but neither God nor the devil had dared to claim me. The sergeant mouthed his plea: would I render mercy for his offence against me? When I had done so, my courage broke. He steadied me on the ladder, then led me down two hundred steps into the narthex, where I saw, rather than heard, the canons pulling the bell ropes to ring the angelus.

The crowd stilled as I emerged from the cathedral porch. It was now the first hour of the fourth of December in the year 1334, Saint Barbara’s Day, and I had been awake since prime the previous day. The tempest had passed through, littering the piazza with broken tiles, orphaned shutters, and unrecognizable debris. Massive building blocks had plummeted from Pope John’s old palace and whole branches had been ripped from the trees upon Doms rock.

The canons stationed me on the rocky esplanade, where I could be admired from the piazza below. Townsfolk were gathering from all quarters of the city and the first rooks flew down to scrutinize the pickings. I must have looked half-burnt, for the oil on my robe and hair had attracted the flying char from the thunder-blow upon the spire. At least I was not on the cart of corpses the becchini wheeled around the piazza so the scorched harlots could be spat upon and cursed as sorcières. Foragers were surveying the black mess where the flaming guardsman had fallen. His legs were still connected to his trunk by a rope of skin, but his arms and head had landed further off. The men circled warily—prodding the remains for cloven hooves and horns, or the bony spine of a forked tail.

A forager speared the Falcon’s burnt helmet and spun it high. “The devil’s skull!”

The mob took up the cry. My ears snapped open and my head rang with each war-like shout. But had this puny devil, no more than a man
in size, actually roused the sorcières to unleash the violent storm? Even the simplest of scavengers appeared doubtful.

As dawn broke in the east, transforming the loopholes in the city’s battlements to insubstantial lace, I saw a sight more vivid than anything yet seen. A stocky man with turnip ears and a leather apron lurched towards me, pointing towards his brazen hair to claim kinship with me. Behind him came a band of men with red hair ranging from brassy carrot to deep umber—the confraternity of weapon-smiths. I knew them as the men who worked in the city’s forges, hammering metal into weapons. They had probably spent the night in their little church of Saint Barbara, praying to her for deliverance from the thunder and lightning.

The master with turnip ears called out to me, “Saint Barbara!”

One at a time, his brethren dropped to the ground. They walked on their knees towards me, crossing themselves to north, south, east, and west. They knelt on the first stair, then the second, ascending by painful increments towards me on the esplanade.

“Barbara, our guardian saint!” the master shouted. “You saved us from the sky’s artillery. Now bless us and save us from burns in our own forges.”

His men repeated the same plea. “Saint Barbara! Bless us and save us!”

Who could blame them for believing that their patron saint still lived? Barbara had been imprisoned in a tower and tortured by fire, which she miraculously extinguished, and as surely as I was gowned in black char, I had been devoured by flames but triumphed over them.

Some of the mob knelt with the weapon-smiths, as eager as they were to find a hero for Saint Barbara’s Day. The poor had a memory for such things, though the rich—who were keeping to their mansions—liked to forget them. This sort of adulation was fraught with peril, since I was still only a hair’s-breadth from death. I looked for an escape from the esplanade, but the phalanx of canons hemmed me in.

Now I saw why, for the Pope’s guardsmen were mustering outside the episcopal palace in their gleaming breastplates and painted nose-pieces. At the second hour of Saint Barbara’s Day, the ninety-year-old Pope
sailed forth on a barge of crimson velvet, ostrich feathers, and cloth of gold—shouldered by a dozen palafrenieri—to see the miraculous bell-ringer for himself. This was the Pope who had sworn never to mount horse or mule except to ride to the Holy See in Rome, yet had kept the papacy captive in this Babylon for eighteen years.