Muse (24 page)

I was kneeling on the floor, clutching the doll so hard that the buckwheat was bursting from a seam, when I observed that Francesco had left his
Confessions
of Saint Augustine. Had he dropped it in his rush, or left it for my edification? A strangled sob came from my very gut. I grabbed the loathsome Augustine and skimmed it across the floorboards with such force of rage that I drove a splinter deep beneath my thumbnail. I rocked myself back and forth, mourning the loss of my beloved child as the blood spurted eagerly from my thumb.

Thirty

I
WAS REDUCED TO
a cold hearth and a smoking lamp for company. At first, a stifling languor overtook me, an inability to think or even care whether I could think or not. Then gusts of wild imaginings attacked—and I ran mad. What day was it? My book of hours, by which I told the time, was face down in the papers on the floor. Had Giovanni been injured? Was he still alive? Sometimes, while he had slept, I feared that his breath had stopped. I would touch his quickly beating heart and be reassured by breath as soft as thistledown. Even now, his scent was on his linen and his cry rang in my ears. Fear chased me mercilessly, preventing me from taking any rest. My only relief was in mindless copying—one word, line, page after another.

The door banged open and Guido entered in his canon lawyer’s gown. He built up the fire, threw open the shutters, and winced at the squalor.

“What have you found out, Guido? Where is my son?”

“With Francesco.”

“But where? At Fontaine-de-Vaucluse?”

“Not there. Some distance off, in a secluded place. Francesco will not tell me, but I will try to find out for you.”

This was not enough—this relief, this joy that Giovanni was safe. I wanted to know more, but Guido was descending to the tavern. When he returned with bread, thick soup, and a flagon of wine, I waved the food away. “I don’t care about myself. Tell me more about my son.”

He sat near me to examine my thumb. “This is festering, Solange.”

I looked at it without much interest. Enflamed by the splinter, the thumb had swollen like a wasp’s nest on a branch. Guido held my wrist with one hand and picked up my miséricorde with the other.

“Scream if you like,” he said, “but do not jerk, or you might lose your thumb.”

He split the skin with the knife, then drew his fingers up my thumb, removing the case of dead skin, filled with pus and the rotting sliver, in one pull. The new thumb beneath was red and half the size. He bandaged it with gauze, and tied the ends snugly.

“Keep it bound even if it throbs.” He reached into his gown. “Francesco sent this for you.”

I snatched it from him: a child’s handprint pressed onto the paper. Smeared, as if Giovanni had been wriggling while Francesco took the print. The letter with it assured me of Giovanni’s well-being, but the same cruel ink, the same cold pen, announced that his father intended to keep and raise him.

I cried for my lost child, clinging to Guido in desperation, weeping harder because of his kindness. After a time, our embrace became more sensual and Guido gave me to know, by pressing himself against me, how I had aroused him, asking me wordlessly to ease his own swelling. How could I refuse? I was not made of adamant or stone. I did not wish to condemn him to lovesickness, for I knew its pain. He undressed me reverently, kneeling at a shrine long venerated from afar. After we had consummated this strange, needful love, he filled a tub from the hot kettle and sponged me with soapy water. Then he combed my wet hair,
dressed me in a clean shift, and fed me the soup, one spoonful at a time. I asked him to sleep beside me to chase away the suffocating cauchemar of deep night.

And so Guido Sette became my lover, but whether he cured me or I cured him I do not know. Perhaps he purged the madness attacking me, or perhaps I saved him from dying of lovesickness. Certainly, our lovemaking rekindled my will to live, for at heart I was a woman still, with a woman’s desire and a woman’s strength.

I washed Giovanni’s doll, stuffed it with clean buckwheat, and sewed it new clothes. I kept the brush with Giovanni’s hair, so that when he came to collect it at the general resurrection, we would be reunited for eternity. Until that day, I would be busy. My mourning was over and anger was now my fuel. Francesco was lost to me, but I would fight to regain my child by any means I could.

A few days before Mardi gras, Francesco’s admirers gathered on the Rhône’s main wharf to send him forth on his sea journey. His years of punning about Laura as his laurel wreath had finally borne fruit, for he was setting off to Rome for his coronation as poet laureate. I was on the wharf, but did not show myself until the Colonnas, up early to bestow large wishes and generous purses on Francesco, had taken their leave. I had not seen him since he had abducted Giovanni.

I approached Francesco and spoke quickly, so he would not turn away. “Take this for good fortune on your journey.”

I gave him his cherished copy of Augustine’s
Confessions
. He was so moved that he almost took my hand, but thought better of it in that public place. Why had I wished him well? Because I wanted his permission to visit my son. I looked around the wharf, but could not find the small person most dear to me.

“Where is Giovanni?”

“He is in good health in the country, far from the city’s corruption.” Francesco’s voice was low and rational. “Your part is over, Solange. You nurtured your infant, but now I must educate my son.”

Under my arm I was carrying Giovanni’s blue jacket and his doll, for I had hoped—against all reason, I realized now—that my son would be brought to see his father off and I would capture him from his nurse’s arms. Gherardo and Guido were undeceived by my pretence of good cheer. They moved to either side of me to prevent me from any rashness that might embarrass Francesco. Eager to leave, Francesco embraced his brother, then Guido, then entered the flat-bottomed barge, which would take him to Marseille to board a galley bound for Italy. The three of us, the truest of his friends, sat leadenly on the riverbank until the current seized the barge. We were acting as if shriven for Lent and embarking on forty days of fasting. Perhaps we were, for Francesco, who had been our meat and drink, was gone.

In misery, bereaved of my beloved son, I handed Gherardo the doll and mended jacket. “Will you give these to Giovanni?”

Gherardo held up the jacket, then wrapped it around the doll and shoved it back at me. “He has much finer garments now.”

“I must see him, Gherardo.”

“He lacks nothing in his daily care.”

“Where is my child?” I shouted.

He picked blades of wet grass from his hose. “Francesco has not told me. He considers me a bad influence on my nephew. Do you think I would prevent a boy from reuniting with his mother? My own mother was everything to me. Noblemen usually care little for their bastards, but I will say this for Checco. He may be high-handed, but he writes his son’s name as Giovanni di Petrarca de Florentia.”

The name I had wanted my son to bear. Giovanni Petrarch, a poet laureate’s son. Warmed by this thought, I admired a Lenten rose blooming in defiance of the cold. If I did not cripple myself with despair, I might find a way to hold my head up once again.

“It does not seem like carnival this year with Francesco away,” said Gherardo. “However, it is a good time to be absent from Avignon, with Pope Benedict ill and the preferiti gathering to elect a successor.”

At last Guido spoke. “Francesco has betrayed you for fame, Solange. You have sacrificed more than anyone for his success.”

“As you say frequently,” Gherardo said, cracking his knuckles.

“With Francesco in Italy, Solange will have little copy work and little income.”

This was true. Since I had few coins put by, I must look for another vocation.

Gherardo was smirking at Guido. “I suppose you will keep sniffing at her while Francesco is away.”

My ears stung. How had he discovered my intimacy with Guido? “There is no need to tell Francesco.”

“I don’t blame you for avenging his cold-heartedness by bedding his friend,” said Gherardo. “Guido has been made a fool of as usual.” Gherardo leaned on Guido’s shoulder, forcing him to sit back down. “Good friend, one thing we can agree on—my brother is a blockhead where women are concerned. The laurel is going to a poet who has spent years skulking after a noblewoman who rarely speaks to him.”

“It is well he knows that other men desire Solange,” Guido said. “Why not tell him?”

Had I really been driven by vengeance? Sometimes Gherardo’s ravings had a kind of wisdom to them. “Guido,” I said softly, “we cannot continue as we were that day. I was overcome by grief, but I need to rise above it. You are finding favour amongst the notaries and might soon become a papal lawyer. We must be friends henceforth, not lovers.”

Guido burst out, “Are you fool enough to love Francesco still?”

I looked at the doll in my lap, still wrapped in the small blue jacket. “I have learnt that it is possible to love and hate the same man. Francesco’s worth is above Avignon or even Rome. The Romans are honouring him more for his Latin letters than his poetry. One day they
will be collected like Cicero’s. He will change the face of literature forever. Much can be forgiven a man of such greatness.”

“Generously said for one who has been spurned,” declared Gherardo. “I believe you love my brother more than I do, for you seldom find any fault in him. But then, we seldom find fault in you. We’re both in love with you, aren’t we, Guido?” That said, he stretched out his long legs and smirked a preposterously large smirk.

I stood up, then stepped over his legs to get past him. “If that is the case, then you must both help me get my son back. Guido, you know the law. You must represent my interests for me. How must I begin?”

Palais des Papes
1342
–
1348

Thirty-one

B
Y THE TIME
I reached rue des Masses, the four men carrying my litter towards the Dominican friary were flagging. It was Pentecost, the thirty-third anniversary of my birth, and Benedict XII was dead. Once the camerlengo had smashed the Pope’s ring and buried it with his corpse, seventeen cardinals elected Pierre Roger of Limousin. The old pope’s tight-fisted ways had pushed the conclave to choose a noble with princely habits, who would be crowned this day in the city’s largest friary. Ahead, a feral pig was gobbling offal from the centre gutter. Soon it would be caught and roasted, the cook denounced for thievery, and the thief dragged in chains to lose a hand or tongue. I hoped my own fate would be kinder, for I had hired the litter to carry me to the coronation in the guise of an invited noblewoman.

As the litter turned into the rue Calade, a glut of men slowed it down. I tapped the roof. “Advance as far as you can.”

I was carrying the legal papers that Guido had drawn up. He had put off his canon lawyer’s gown for a palace notary’s and found out how I must proceed to get Giovanni back. I had to petition the new pope
directly, and to do so, I must get close enough to deposit the slick vellum in his hand. However, if the guards smelt me out as a threat to the Holy Father, I might grace the inside of the papal jail instead. Hidden in my belt was my miséricorde, in case I needed to protect my honour or my life.

The city’s labourers and craftsmen, forbidden to mount their usual Pentecost festivities, were attempting to procure work by brandishing their tools: scissors, cleavers, awls, and wine-thieves. As my litter advanced, I heard two carpenters speculating that the new pope would favour the rich and squeeze the tradesmen. Why should Pope Benedict have gilded nails in his coffin, when they could not get work hammering iron ones?

My litter-bearers were halted by the crowd. Two red-haired smiths, in their iron-toed boots and leather aprons, shoved their faces into my litter with great joyful grins of recognition, asking, “Where do you go?”

“To see the coronation from one of the viewing stands,” I answered.

The litter-bearers hoisted my box onto their shoulders to jog it forwards. The weapon-smiths used their brawn to clear a path for me through the rough fellows of other trades until we joined a row of similar conveyances creeping towards the friary. Here, where the street curved, the courtesans broadcast their calling as loudly as did the tradesmen, wearing their white caps with crimson ribbons as the law dictated. The great machine of the church was changing direction and the clerics sent packing by the previous pope were streaming back into the city. A thousand had already arrived to beg gifts and benefices from the new pope—a thousand clerics in need of beds and food and women. The innkeeper of the Cheval Blanc had already taken in five more harlots and raised my rent to try to force me out.

My litter was set down at the friary gate and a sergeant in the new pope’s colours inspected me. I held out a Latin document that said no more than was safe to say, that I was a citizen of Avignon.