The Dream of Scipio (28 page)

Those few hours were more than enough to turn Avignon from a thriving mercantile city, full of self-confidence and bustle, of goldsmiths and jewelers, cloth merchants and sellers of food and wine, bankers and lawyers, into a mass of terrified humanity, each individual with no thought but of their own impending end. Twenty people died the first day; sixty the second, one hundred the day after that. At its peak, five hundred a day were dying, more than could be buried, and the rotting corpses piled up and became a source of disease on their own. Within a week, travelers could tell where the corpses were being taken from the thick black cloud of flies hovering overhead, the noise of the buzzing audible long before the smell could be detected. After that, the fires lit to consume the corpses threw up a thick column of smoke and deposited a thin layer of ash over the nearby streets.

The city collapsed; trade stopped, no food came in, the merchants packed their bags, the streets remained unswept and rapidly became filthy. All those little services that enable huge numbers of people to live crammed together in a small space vanished overnight. Fresh water, bread, all the basics of daily existence became scarce until the pope himself intervened to order men back to their jobs. The rich fled, many priests and cardinals amongst them, but accomplished little except to take the infection farther afield before they, too, died. Others stayed, from lassitude or defiance, and died in their turn. The lucky ones were those who were already outside the city before the plague hit, and who had the good sense to remain there. But it was luck that decided who lived and who died; men were like soldiers ambushed in the night, not knowing who their assailant was, where it came from, how it might be fended off.

Ceccani was one of the few who was not afraid; his iron will and belief in divine favor rather led him to see the onslaught as an opportunity. What he wished to accomplish was perfectly clear in his mind; how to do it was less certain. He wanted to make sure the papacy went back to Rome, and had become the discreet leader of the faction in the curia that held that every day that the pope remained in corrupt, venal, greedy Avignon was an extra offense to God. As long as the papacy was there, it was subject to France, that barbarian nation from the north. The pope was French, as was his predecessor, and so would his successor be, in all probability. The cardinalate dare not even cast a vote without gaining the king of France’s approval. Not that this implied disdain for the current incumbent, whose only sin, in Ceccani’s eyes, was his country of origin. He admired Clement greatly, considered him a true prince, a man of stature who filled the throne well. Nonetheless, that throne was in the wrong place.

The plague itself was a sign of divine disapproval, a punishment meted out against the whole of mankind for this error. It was also the opportunity to restore the situation, and Ceccani realized this immediately. The theological and the political blended so perfectly it was impossible to tell them apart; there was, in fact, no distinction to him at all. It was the destiny, the right, the obligation of the papacy to reign supreme over all temporal rulers. This could not happen in Avignon, and so the pope must leave. It was God’s will, and God had now provided the means to ensure His will was obeyed.

However, Clement VI did not want to leave; he had committed himself to vast building projects—his palace, churches, walls—that underscored in stone and gold an ever more likely permanency. So he would have to be persuaded and, failing that, forced to return. The Comte de Fréjus in his way became part of God’s plan.

Necessarily so; for Ceccani was aware that his desires were in a distinct minority in the palace. The influence of France had been exerted for so long that far too many of the cardinals were French; the life was settled, prosperous, and more satisfying than that of Rome, that decrepit, violence-ridden, bug-infested ruin of a city. Such people, led by Cardinal de Deaux, held that the days of Rome were done and, just as the church had once thrown off the empire and emerged the stronger for it, so now it could discard Rome itself. Tradition said the leader of the church must be Bishop of Rome; it did not say he should live there, and as a man possessed of four bishoprics he had never visited, Ceccani might have looked more sympathetically on this argument than, in fact, he did.

For Ceccani, power-hungry and ruthless though he was, had a soul touched by the sublime; it was what led him to patronize Olivier, to collect manuscripts, to accumulate one of the first collections of Roman coins and antiquities. He was fascinated by Rome; he believed—and held that others should so believe as well—that the church in Rome was a greater thing than the church in Avignon. That only in Rome could it play out its allotted role as the true heir of the empire, and re-create that empire in a new form. He aimed high, higher than any man alive, and was prepared to stoop low to achieve his dreams. He would open Aigues-Mortes to the English, strip the king of France of his only Mediterranean port, strike a blow against him that could never be forgiven. And in so doing would set the French against the Countess of Provence, the owner of Avignon. She would cancel the lease the papacy held on the city, and the whole curia would have to leave. Where would it go then? Where could it go, but back to the place it should never have left?

IT IS A MATTER of record that Marcel had a good war. When the lightning strike of the German military hit France, he was a
sous-préfet
west of Burgundy, and took upon himself the task of organizing relief for the tens of thousands of refugees flowing through his
département
like a human river. He instructed the officials he did not need that they should fly, and took over the whole area when his superior disappeared as well.

On the evening of 21 June, four hundred soldiers took up a defensive position by the river Loire, another fifty mined and defended the main bridge into the town. From a hurried visit, he learned that these men—mainly Senegalese—had been instructed to hold the river crossing as long as possible, then blow it up. The captain in charge had not slept for days, and already looked like a man defeated.

“The Germans are about a day behind us. The division needs a couple of days to regroup so it can counterattack. We have to delay them. There are two crossings, and if both are held, the Germans can be stopped.”

“They’ll shell the town.”

The captain shrugged without interest. “Yes,” he said. “More than likely.”

By the time he got back to his office, a delegation from the town council was waiting for him. The mayor had fled, and they knew nothing of what was going on. Marcel explained, and as he did so he saw the panic spread across their faces.

“They’ll destroy the town,” one said. “There will be nothing left.”

Marcel nodded.

“Is there nothing you can do, sir?” another asked.

He made up his mind. “Leave it in my hands,” he said. “Go into the country for a few days. Head south, not north. I will see what I can manage.”

He went back to the soldiers. “You are not to stay here,” he said. “Your task is hopeless, and all you will accomplish is the destruction of my town. The army is disintegrating. The war is lost.”

The captain was not interested. “I follow orders,” he said. “If I am told to stay here, here I stay. Win or lose.”

Marcel left. Half an hour later, he took a step for which he was roundly congratulated by the whole town later on, although some also considered that it was as near to treason as was possible.

What exactly he did in the next six hours is unknown. He shut himself in his office and saw no one. All that is certain is that at five that evening—a beautiful, soft summer’s evening—he went back to the captain and told him the Germans had been in contact and demanded their surrender or withdrawal.

“They say they are already across the river upstream, so your task is pointless anyway. If you withdraw now, you can rejoin your battalion and continue to fight. If you don’t you will be surrounded and captured within hours.”

The captain heard him out, then hurled the glass he was carrying against the wall in blind fury. “They said they would hold that bridge,” he shouted at Marcel. “Come what may, they would hold it. They promised me. At least they promised me that.”

He turned away, not wishing the civilian official to see him in his moment of shame and humiliation, but not doubting the truth of what he was told either.

Then he straightened himself up and called his junior officer. “It’s all over. The bridge upriver has gone. We’ve got to get out of here.”

The news traveled fast. The soldiers abandoned their positions as they had apparently been abandoned by their comrades. They knew, as soldiers do by instinct, that there would be no more fighting. Many left their weapons, some already were changing out of their uniforms, wanting only to go home. Only the Senegalese troops stayed armed and uniformed. They had nowhere to go.

Only they, also, were pursued by the Germans when they swept into the town four hours later. There was a brief fight. They were all killed.

After the war, when Marcel’s career was being examined to see whether he should remain in public office, he said that the initial contact came from a phone call from the German forces, which were under orders to cause as little destruction as possible. During the six hours in his office, he was negotiating terms to save as much as he could from the wreckage of the country.

For this he received his exoneration, and was allowed to continue in the civil service. Long before that he had also received an official vote of thanks from the town council when they returned, and a tearful farewell from the townspeople when he was transferred south three months later.

The fact remains that no note of any phone call or other contact has ever been found in the archives of the German army, nor could any of its officers remember such a thing when questioned after the war. It is also a matter of record that the bridge upstream held out for another two days, until its defenders heard that the troops in Marcel’s town had surrendered.

 
 
 
SHORTLY BEFORE the plague arrived, Olivier traveled to the west, into France. He often made such trips, voyaging on behalf of a master who sent him to sort out some quarrel between recalcitrant priests, reorganize the tax gathering, represent his master in a dispute with the secular authorities; all these things he did with care and some success, as his obvious desire to resolve problems rather than merely end them made him a popular and welcome figure.

This time, however, he was to be merely a messenger.

“A little below you, my boy,” said Ceccani with a smile. “But I can trust no one else. Do your job well, and you will be rewarded.”

“I need no reward, sir.”

“This time you will get one, whether you like it or not. Because this time I forbid you absolutely to tarry. Not even if you come across the manuscript of the Republic in Plato’s own hand will you delay for so much as a moment. Do you understand?”

Olivier nodded. The cardinal seemed unduly preoccupied, as though he was carrying an enormous weight on his shoulders. He had been like this for some weeks; short-tempered, refusing to respond to questions, drifting off in the middle of conversations to dwell on his thoughts. Olivier knew nothing of what was going on, of course; even gossip was for once carrying no tales or rumors. But something was worrying the cardinal greatly; of that he was certain.

“I will do exactly as you say, my lord,” he said gently. “To whom am I to deliver this letter?”

“You will take this to the Bishop of Winchester, who you will find in Bordeaux. You will bring me the reply as swiftly as possible.”

Olivier was not that surprised; the Bishop of Winchester was one of the most important people in England, known for the way he had sought to weave a tapestry of alliances to entrap the king of France and further his master’s aims in the war. Ceccani, he thought, must be taking a hand in the business of trying to find a peace between the two sides. Certainly it was needed.

He bowed deeply and left.

He accomplished his task, traveled to Bordeaux and discharged his commission; and also controlled himself in the matter of manuscripts. Not that this is so important; rather, the one event that is of significance amid the tumult of war and diplomacy, overshadowing the march of armies, the letters of the great, and the march of pestilence, is that on his return, about two days’ ride from Avignon, he met a traveling peddler.

Olivier was traveling simply, as was his wont, alone and on a horse, carrying with him a little food and water, a bag with the papers he needed to discharge his tasks, a thick woollen cloak to keep off the cold, and a wide-brimmed hat on his head to protect him from the rain. He had taken off the gold ring that was his one sign of position lest it tempt another into avarice and violence, and had slung his shoes around his neck so that his feet could be kept fresh by the air as he plodded along. He was happy; the weather was fine enough though chilly, the road good and empty; he was lost in thought and careless of the world—perhaps the state that gave rise to the couplet on forgetfulness in one of his surviving poems, for Olivier had an unprecedented ability to seize a passing moment and fix it in words, rendering the transient timeless.

As he rounded a corner obscured by a clump of trees, he came across an upturned wagon, a donkey lying on the ground and struggling to get up, and a man, not young, trying to loose it from its harness. He was cursing quietly; all around were the impedimenta of the traveling craftsman heading from village to market—his own stock, which turned out to be three pairs of beautifully made shoes, some uncut leather freshly tanned, and some baskets made by his family. The food grown by others in his village and surplus to their needs, and some small rolls of cloth, gray and ragged, for sale to whomever wished to buy such rough material.

Olivier stopped his horse and watched a moment, then leaped down and went to help. His assistance was needed, as the donkey was thrashing around and risking breaking one of its legs or snapping some vital part of the cart. The owner scarcely acknowledged him to begin with, but concentrated on the task of saving his livelihood, breathing a huge sigh of relief when, eventually, the beast was freed, rolled away, got up, and went carelessly off to the nearest patch of grass for a feed. Then he turned to Olivier and grunted his thanks.