Muse (33 page)

Beware, dear Countess, of sailors bearing tales from Toulon, for the plague is coming north.

A servant of God in Montrieux-le-Jeune.

Vacate et videte quoniam ego sum Deus.

The pilgrim carrying Gherardo’s letter brought others addressed to Pope Clement VI that told a similar story. I listened in apprehension as the pilgrim begged the Pope to pray for his own city, Aix, and to open the gates to all the refugees toiling on foot or by ox-cart towards
Avignon. Panic rode before them, for they were said to be travelling under a plague-cloud of biblical dimensions that was advancing one league a day. Even now, the lookouts on the palace towers thought they could see, to the south, the black sirocco carrying the plague towards us.

Just before Epiphany in the year 1348, Clement sat in his half-finished audience chamber, listening to cases and portents about the plague. In my chair beside him, I anchored my tongue, for too much prophecy was already in the air. Every delegate was allowed to speak in turn, both rich and poor. A nobleman complained that his cask of wine had turned to vinegar. A beggar displayed the miraculous blood spots on his tattered cloak. A savant spoke of auguries in flood and famine and proclaimed that the eclipse had been a portent of the horror now travelling northwards. A village priest swore that the plague was God’s punishment for wickedness. Avarice, lust, gluttony—he rhymed off the court’s sins, including the Pope’s incest with his niece. Had this simple man read the eclogues Francesco was writing from Italy, in which the Pope appeared as a drunkard and the cardinals as goats?

As the corps of refugees trudged closer, the citizens demanded that the gates be barred, but Clement was adamant that his city would house all those who sought its shelter. I was visiting Félicité inside the Poor Clares’ priory one night when the gatekeeper alerted me that the first refugees, more than two hundred strong, had stepped on the rue du Cheval Blanc. I left quickly, keeping ahead of the migrants as they dragged themselves, cowls pulled over their foreheads, up the rue de la Curaterie, then the rue allant du Puits des bœufs, driving fear before them until they reached the papal square. I was too late to get back into the palace, since the guardsmen, in their breastplates and polished helms, had formed a human barrier to prevent the migrants from entering. Their march halted, the men threw their robes into a heap, lit the fire, and circled the smoking mess, beating their naked flesh with tails of rope.

I watched them from across the square, where a mob was gathering. Some people were ringing hand bells to dispel the deadly plague
cloud. Others were accusing the flagellants of being Jews or Jew-haters or plague-carriers or, in a muddle of fear, all three at once. They were soon joined by other knaves, who had armed themselves with cudgels, clubs, and pikestaffs to give the visitors a thrashing. Every chamber-pot and close-stool was making it his business to take the law into his own hands.

The migrants’ scourges hit their chests then backs, their right shoulders then left shoulders, foreheads then thighs, with a nauseating
whack-whack, whack-whack
. By dawn, their whips were red and their blood was flowing from open wounds. One man fell on the ground, his tongue swollen like a dog’s. I approached to pick up his water flagon. A few drops remained, which I squeezed on his tongue. He had a pungent odour and black patches under his skin, but as far as I could tell, none of the carbuncles Gherardo had reported. Then, as he rolled over, I saw it—nestling in the pit of his arm—a black plague-egg. I ran the gauntlet of mocking knaves to get to the mercy barrel across the piazza, but when I attempted to fill the flagon, a rogue kicked the barrel and it rolled down the slope, breaking the spigot. Before I could say an Ave Maria, all the water sprayed out on the ground. The flagellants were now a stupefied mass staring at the wasted water with glassy eyes.

A steady drumbeat signalled the approaching men-at-arms. The new city marshal, one of the Pope’s nephews, was finally making an appearance with the captain of the palace, Aigrefeuille, in his star-studded armour. Their gauntlets flew this way and that, flashing their ancestral crests as they gave orders, until they had persuaded the flagellants to leave the square with promises of clothing, bread, and ale.

The plague-stricken friar I had touched leapt up as if resurrected, to join the flagellants who were snaking off. The city knaves now aimed themselves at me, making a great racket, in which I heard shouts of
Saint Barbara!
I saw how it must look to them: as if I had raised the friar from the dead. The coarser men taunted me, full of unspent energy and sour drink. One took a swipe at me with a knife, drawing blood.
Another plucked some hair from my head and held his trophy aloft, swearing it would ward off the plague.

Some red-haired smiths collected around me to tug at my sleeves and hem. Instead of chasing off my attackers, they joined in, using their clumsy weapons to cut pieces from my robe. I was spun from man to man as a source of relics, and when my blood dripped on the earth, they mopped it reverently with scraps of my robe or filthy sponges. How had it come to pass that my life was no longer my own, but the property of such men? Those who had worshipped me as the miraculous bell-ringer on the tower, their own Saint Barbara who could drive off thunder and eclipses, were on the point of turning me into a martyr themselves. I clutched the hilt of my miséricorde, ready to plunge it into my flesh before they did it for me. My vision blurred into a delirium of pulsing reds and blacks. Was this a malfeasance of the earth, or the result of the surrounding horror and stink and noise?

How long had I held my knife before the sun rose from behind the palace? I hid it in the tongue of my belt just in time, for at my elbows were two Limousin knights in full armour, their weapons reflecting light and order. Never had I greeted them with greater joy. To my shame, I shrank from my dark roots and became, once more, a creature of the light.

Forty

T
HE TEETH OF THE
inner portcullis bit into the earth behind me, and the knights’ fingers dug into my elbows. I was not so much being rescued as force-marched to a reckoning. Once I was dressed more cleanly, Hugues Roger collected me. He fell in step with me, showing his knees in a short hunting tunic. He must have ridden hard to get there, because his hose was streaked with dust.

“Why did you expose yourself to that jacquerie in the piazza? You should not have left the palace. And to touch a diseased friar? For a supposed clairvoyante, you are remarkably short-sighted.” He gave me a sideways jab into the salle de Jésus. “Here’s my brother waiting for you. Try not to cause him any more pain.”

Word of the mystery in the piazza had travelled quickly, for the new camerlengo’s robes flew out darkly as he stormed in, trailing Guy de Chauliac, the most recent court surgeon. More boots were scraping across the tiles. Advancing were Clement’s nephews, Nicolas de Besse and Guillaume de La Jugie, followed by the men who had married into the family, then the uncles, cousins, officers, and Limousin nobles.
Nicolas de Besse wore his new cardinal’s mozzetta, but few of the others had been given time to put on their robes of office. Notwithstanding the haste, seven cardinals stood before their pontiff, all members of the family. The men talked in bursts about the need to protect the Pope, cursed and commiserated about the pestilence, and reached a decision quickly.

Hugues Roger spoke for them. “Clement—Your Holiness—we have decided that you must retreat to Châteauneuf-du-Pape until the disease abates.”

“I will not seek asylum while my city is blackened by contagion.”

Hugues Roger threw up his hands, then snapped them into fists. “You cannot come and go like a commoner!”

The surgeon steepled his fingers so that his thumbs grazed his heart. “If you will not retreat, Holy Father, you must keep to your private apartments and see only those examined by your doctors. Banquets and audiences must be postponed. For her own protection, the Countess will be sent into the country.”

Clement was brusque. “The Countess will remain here with me.”

The men were about to argue, when a herald came in at a run to report that the diseased friar and several of the flagellants had died in an almshouse outside the wall. More troubling, three of the city’s own Carmelites were dead and others dying.

“The Carmelites are hermits,” Captain Aigrefeuille said. “They cannot have been exposed to the flagellants.”

The runner said, “A few days ago, they accepted a novice from Aigues-Mortes.”

“Throw in bladders of wine, then nail the cloister shut,” Aigrefeuille said. “Let it become their tomb.”

Clement lifted his gloved hand to silence the captain. “There will be other plague houses. You cannot board all of them up. De Chauliac, how does it spread?”

“It is thought that the poisonous vapours enter by the mouth and nose.”

“Then we will build fires in the streets to drive the vapours off,” said Clement. “Where is the new city marshal? Tell him to bring me the parish maps. We will need to enlarge the cimetière des pauvres.”

Clement and his officers worked through the day to organize alms and relief. After the evening angelus, the Pope appeared at his new indulgence window to speak to the clerics, merchants, and guild-masters called to assembly in the courtyard below.

His final instructions were, “Every doctor in Avignon, from the Jews to my own physicians, must attend the plague-stricken at my expense. Each of my churches will become an infirmary. The priests must attend every man, woman, and child with the peste to give them the last rites.”

A man in a brown cowl hollered from the courtyard, “They are dying faster than they can be absolved!”

The Pope replied, “Then every priest from curé to cardinal must remit their sins without hearing their confessions.”

“How many cardinals do you see here?” the loud-mouth yelled. “Most are packing up their households! Sauve-qui-peut.”

Save yourself
. Others picked up the cry, pushing a sea of cowardly flesh towards the bottleneck of the double portcullis.

On the morrow, when the herald returned, he was told to stay in the grande cour, so he would not breathe on anybody’s face. He broadcast his news from below. The refugees from the south were finally crossing the Durance. Half had died on the journey, but the survivors, who were coughing up black blood, would soon be at the city gates.

We never saw the runner again. Another replaced him, then another, as each was infected and succumbed. The wealthy Avignonnais fled to their ancestral houses in the country and Clement’s allies barricaded themselves at Villeneuve across the bridge, thinking more of their own
selves than of the general doom. Soon everyone with the means to escape had done so, leaving the diseased and poor inside the city wall. Palace servants who fell ill were stripped of their livery and sent to their homes. If servants had the misfortune to die inside the palace, their corpses were shunted out at night or shoved into the largest mouth of the palace drain, the égout souterrain, to wash towards the Rhône.

Without Félicité beside me, the hours slowed and my food tasted flat and bitter. Each day, I climbed the corkscrew stairs to the palace roof to strain my eyes for the flag on the Poor Clares’ bell-tower: white, the agreed-on signal to tell me that Félicité was well and God was still capable of grace. The Poor Clares had barred their gate and cloistered themselves so they would not contract the plague. They were of noble blood and loved their comfort more than succouring refugees. For this I was glad, because the disease had been shut out also.

As the weeks passed, the Avignon death toll mounted. At first it was said that a thousand people died in a month, then a thousand a week, then a thousand in a single day. The sick and needy clung to the Pignotte, scooping up the hard loaves that the Pope’s bakers threw out the windows at them to avoid contamination.

Then, just before Shrovetide, the branches of the Sorgue flooded the alluvial plain to the east of the city. The mistral blew fiercely for three days, then six, then nine. I crept onto the palace roof and sheltered behind the parapet to watch the wind-lashed waters of the Rhône batter Saint Bénezet’s bridge, and push the waves into the moat. The dyers’ canal, now unable to feed into the moat, was running over its banks to swamp the dwellings of the workers. Some of them were already camped across from the palace on Doms rock.