8: Three Women's Hearts Differently Made
"Et vous, la gente Saulciciere
Qui de dancier estre adestre,
Guillemete la Tapiciere,
Ne mesprenez vers vostre maistre:
Tost vous fauldra clorre fenestre,
Plus ne servirez qu'ung viel prestre,
Ne que monnoye qu'on descrie."
("And you, my well-bred Sausage-monger,
Who at love's dance has so much skill,
And Guillaumette the Tapestry-weaver,
Don't show scorn towards your master:
For soon you'll have to shut up shop,
Some old priest your only customer,
Being no more than devalued coin.")
François Villon, Ballade de la Belle Heaulmière aux filles de joie, from Le Grand Testament
Mother Sibylle nodded, her veils bobbing around her equine face. "Yes, he had to be told about his brother, but… was it not too soon?"
"He asked me," said Pierre. "I couldn't lie to him." (Well, not a whole lie, he thought: never would he reveal how the poor student had died.)
She sighed, and sipped her tisane.
"I promised him I would be a brother to him, in Jehan's stead."
"That was generous indeed."
"Well, he's been more than generous to me over the years! You see, although my parents were people of substance – my father was tax-farmer for Gonesse – I was left with nothing when they were killed in the siege."
"Ah, yes. That was the year before the pestilence." She dated most events in relation to her own loss.
"So I was alone, six years old, and forced to fend for myself. For ten years, I raised myself on the streets, living on my wits. I couldn't settle to a trade, or to soldiering or religion. I had a notion to teach, since I'd failed at everything else, but I couldn't read or write. I took my troubles to the archdeacon, thinking he might advise me how to find a teacher. Instead, he offered to educate me himself." He smiled wryly. "Now I'm a man of letters, and can write plays that no-one wants to watch, and poems no-one wants to read."
"– And borrow my chairs for balancing acts with stray cats?" she interjected drily.
He grinned: "One must eat! – But you see, through all the vagaries of fortune, I have a store of knowledge in my head – however ill I remember it – and that is Dom Claude's doing!"
"And what of your wife?"
"Yes, well, of course he knows her, too."
"He called for her when he was delirious – by her nickname."
"Oh, I daresay that was something about Hermes Trismegistus and the Emerald Tablet," he said, with a feigned air of authority (hoping she would accept that explanation). "Emeralds have profound mystical significance for him, I think – but that's a part of his philosophy he thought too esoteric to share with me in full. The higher levels of hermetics are beyond even my erudition."
Mother Sibylle gave one of her tight, forced smiles. "But you must surely know that emeralds protect against the sin of lust? There's the miraculous ring of Saint Agnes, for example – your wife's name-saint."
Pierre gawped. "Really?"
"Young men are easily tempted, whatever their estate. And I wasn't born yesterday… Speak plainly, Messire Gringoire: has Monsieur of Josas put horns on you?"
"No, but…"
"But?"
He squirmed, and fiddled with the sleeves of his doublet. He did not want to betray either Claude or Esméralda. "He's my oldest and dearest friend…"
The widow fixed him with a gaze sharp as Pâquette's sewing needles. "Doubtless Arthur said the same of Lancelot."
"No, no… What I mean is…" He stared down at his worn shoes, and mumbled: "She wouldn't have him."
"You mean he tried?"
He nodded, still scrutinising the broken stitching on the pikes of his shoes.
"He's suffered the torments of Hell. I nursed him through his fever: he spoke wildly of desire and sin, always with her name on his lips…"
"It wasn't requited."
She sniffed. "Hm. Just as well. Just as well… Thank you, messire."
Claude lay with his eyes closed. He was almost nineteen again, running on long legs in panic and despair from his College of Lisieux, up the Grande Rue Saint-Jacques, across the Île de la Cité, and on to the right bank – home, home to the Rue Tirechappe, his gown flying out behind him.* He passed corpses on carts, and the strange, masked faces of the plague-doctors. They tried to stop him entering the house, but he pushed past, heedless of the danger. On the table downstairs two bodies lay side by side, stitched into their shrouds, ready to be loaded on to the burial cart. In the late summer heat, he could already smell decay.
"But there's a child – a baby! Where's my brother?"
In his cradle, in soiled swaddling bands, the little mite was whimpering from thirst, like an abandoned puppy. He snatched him up under his arm, as if he were a rather awkward volume.
Just the two of us left, little Jehan: the last of the Frollos.
Just the two of us…
No more.
He wished that he himself had died falling from the tower, dashed to pieces on the stones below; or from the fever that had wasted his flesh and left him as feeble as the infant in the cradle. What little merriment and laughter he had known had been Jehan's gift. Life without him – spoilt, foolish, improvident, but always loved – would be desolate.
He heard the rustle of woollen skirts, the rattle of prayer beads at the belt: the sound his mother used to make when she walked. He remembered blonde curls, like Jehan's, swept up into the wired horseshoe of a bourrelet, beneath a starched veil; a soft, plump face, the mouth grown small and bitter with grief and prayer.
He felt only a raw emptiness, as if his soul had been scoured out of his battered body.
"I know," Mother Sibylle said gently.
He did not respond.
"You've lost so much, haven't you?"
He sighed.
She stroked his brow and his remaining hair. "And you feel quite alone. But you're not."
He opened his eyes and looked up at her. "My little brother…"
She nodded. "I'm sorry you found out so soon: I was going to wait until you were stronger."
"I ran from the college, all the way home… They were shrouded, for taking to the Innocents… And he was starving in his cradle… I took him to a wet-nurse at our mill…"
"I know, my boy. You've been a dutiful, faithful son and brother all these years: take comfort from that."
"What comfort?" he said bitterly. "My Jehan died unshriven: he'll burn in Purgatory!"
"So will we all, that are not saints, for greater or lesser time. But he was scarce more than a child: I'm sure he can't have so many great sins to be purged!"
Claude almost choked. Gambling, drinking, whoring: at sixteen, the lad was – had been – already a confirmed scoundrel. He had even seen him drunkenly groping a doxy in the same low bawdy house on the Pont Saint-Michel where he had stabbed Phœbus. "You don't know Jehan!"
"Oh really?"
"But every Mass I say shall be for him: in all the life that's left to me, every Mass… I say them for our parents and brothers and sisters already. And I shall pay chantry priests to say them for all of us when I, too, am dead… which I pray may be soon."
"For shame! That's wickedness, to pray for death! Your wounds are mending, and a learned priest like you may yet do much good on earth for Christ and His Church."
"I am the most vile of sinners."
"Aren't we all? Your humility's truly Christian, but our good bishop expects great things of you. Indeed, I shouldn't be at all surprised if he wants you to succeed him."
"But I have shamed my office – my honour – my name…"
"What shame? Misfortune and suffering are all I see. The sickness will pass."
He gazed up from the pillows, his eyes filled with a pain that transcended the merely physical. "The sickness is in my soul."
She smiled. "Love-sickness, you mean? The little dancer?"
He winced.
"I had guessed as much. I've spoken with her husband."
"And you do not despise me for it?"
The corner of her mouth twitched in amusement. "The Devil only sends the worst temptations to the best of men – Saint Antony, Saint Jerome, …and, I think, Monsieur the Archdeacon of Josas."
"That's a blasphemy!"
She shook her head. "I merely mean you're in good company: you wouldn't have been worth tempting if you weren't so virtuous beforehand. So – you were tempted in your body, but you have suffered for it."
"I have been mortifying my flesh for months."
"So that's the story, is it?" She looked at his healing wounds, then at his gaunt face. "I won't pry."
"Good: for if I told you all that has been in my heart, you'd be horrified."
She chuckled. "Oh, I doubt it! We've nursed many types and stations of men under this roof, some of them great sinners; harlots, too! I've heard stories that would make a man-at-arms blush… But I have faith in you, Dom Claude: you are a good man, whatever fools say of your studies." She patted his hands: scholar's hands, long and slender, with a few old burn scars from his experiments. The bruises were fading, and the fingernails he had lost through clinging to gutters and tiles were growing back. "And whatever has befallen you, I know you will learn from it, because you are wise, too."
"Wise? I have been mad, I fear."
"If young men can't run mad for love, who can? And you are still young – younger than I was, when my tribulation came: the pestilence – the same visitation that took off your parents… All I loved were gone."
"All?"
"All… Eight children I had living then, of eleven I'd borne, and my good husband, too."
He nodded, understanding. "There were several of us, too, but only Jehan and I lived past five. I was pledged to the Church because Our Lady saved me from sickness. My mother longed for my ordination, but never lived to see it."
"She would have been proud of you, I'm sure – though not too proud, I hope. I took great pride in my husband and my children, you see: too much pride. That was my sin. I loved them so!"
"I think my mother dared not… She lost too many. I had our Holy Mother Church instead."
She looked at him. It was as she had thought: a child who had grown to manhood loving, yet never loved in return. "You know, my first-born would be your age, if he'd lived. A clever boy, my Philippe – not in your way, not with scholarship and books, but he worked with his father, and was doing well for himself in trade. He was my favourite, I'll not deny. Oh, I was too proud of him! But he was the first to fall sick. Dear God! And when I saw you lying in a fever… But you're brave and strong, and that will see you through your trials."
"To what end?"
"A good and Christian one, I hope, but not for many years! Besides, you still have your poor foundling to care for, don't you? I hear that he's thriving these days – so Father Thierry says, at least. What was it you called him, now – Quadragesima?"
"Quasimodo."
"Yes, that's it! – The bishop and the king himself praised him greatly for saving the cathedral from that dreadful mob of ruffians! You still have him: that, at least, is a consolation."
"Ah, yes, I do…" Claude sighed – thanks to the effects of shock and fever, mercifully oblivious to the irony.
Pâquette had been re-reading de Voragine's account of her daughter's name-saint. Agnes of Rome, at the age of thirteen, refused the hand of a noble, though pagan suitor. She was thrown into a brothel, but her hair grew to hide her nakedness. She was to be burned for sorcery, but the fires burned her persecutors, leaving her untouched. She was run through with a sword, but even after death she still wrought miracles of chastity. A priest, Paul, who had sought leave to marry was given an emerald ring by the Pope, who told him to place it on the finger of her statue: wedded to the dead saint, his carnal desires left him.
A wretched bridal-bed, she thought. She compared the cold stones on which she had lain with Christ the Bridegroom with the miniver-lined coverlet of the Vicomte de Cormontreuil, to whom she had given herself when she was scarce older than Saint Agnes. She struggled to accept the logic of the virgin martyrs in the book. Why was surrendering one's maidenhead deemed worse than parting with various other body parts – eyes, tongue, paps (as if the hurts she had done her own were not bad enough!) – not least one's actual head? The memories that returned to her ever more vividly and tormentingly, as she began to regain strength, gave the lie to this teaching.
To prefer death would be to wish away her own Agnès, the fruit of her sin. Besides, she had repented: fifteen years' privations and penance, struggling with her thoughts and lacerating her body, had surely wiped clean a mere six years of harlotry. She thought, too, of the good Sisters of Saint Anne: their marriages and accouchements had not disbarred them from attaining a holy life in widowhood.
And yet her Agnès was even more perverse than any virgin martyr. It was not that she had sought death before unchastity, merely death before unchastity with anyone other than Phœbus de Châteaupers, which was hardly saintly, given his reputation. Meanwhile, the Archdeacon of Josas lay weak as a fledgling fallen from his nest, and the silly jade was already fretting about him being a danger to her.
To have driven a man like that mad for love of her – a man with position and property, to say nothing of his learning and his looks… (Pâquette recalled Dom Claude standing with his head bowed over the public breviary beside her cell, tall and elegant as a carved saint on Notre Dame of Reims, yet not at all made of stone – his eyes and lips afire.) She had thought the like only happened in the romances of Tristan or of Lancelot. Once, at a fair in Reims, she had heard a minstrel from the South tell of some long-ago poet who had run mad for a lady called the She-Wolf, and had dressed in wolf-skin, and so been hunted by her hounds… The priest – even if he had done only half of what Agnès had claimed – had been no less distracted than this Vidal, or whatever he was called.
Even as the utter folly of it appalled her, she was, in a way, jealous: she had never inspired such a passion in any man. A drink, a laugh, a smile, a tumble on the mattress (or wherever was convenient), paid for in coin or jewellery – but never blood and torment, and vows of love or death. Yet the girl cared only for that swaggering Captain of the Archers, who had clearly thought no more of her than of any of his other cheap little harlots.
As a distraction, she began to teach her daughter needlework. Agnès had known enough only to keep her own clothes in repair, not the fine work for which ladies and gentlemen were willing to pay well. Using scraps from the charity box, she showed her how to embroider with silks and beads, but the girl was impatient. Wasp-like, always wanting to buzz about, she was not accustomed to any activity that required sitting still for any length of time. Every few minutes, she would spring up and begin to walk around, or practice a dance-step.
"Why must I learn all of this, mother?" she asked in frustration.
"Because you won't be able to dance in the streets all your life."
"Why not?"
"Bloom fades soon on the streets – I know. And because we're kin to the Pradons, who are well-respected people. You need a real skill or trade, not kicking and twirling, showing yourself all naked beneath your skirts."
The girl's eyes flashed with insolence. "Not like your trade, then?"
"I want better for you, can't you see that? Or a better protector, if you won't play wife to poor Pierre, good lad though he is!"
"But he isn't a knight!"
"Knights aren't the only men worth having."
"I'm not sure I like your meaning, mother."
"Indeed. In Reims, some of the grand churchmen dressed their paramours like duchesses. They live well – bishops especially. And even an archdeacon isn't to be sneered at."
Agnès-Esméralda pouted her red lips. "I think I like it even less."
"Knights get themselves slain in wars or duels, and then where are you? It's not as if the likes of us could ever be a lawful wife to such men, to be left with a dower of gold or land."
"But I wanted none of that! Only to be loved by him!"
Pâquette frowned. "More fool you, then! A girl with no fortune to hoist her chemise for free? He'd have got you with child, and turned on his heel faster than his horse, without giving you so much as a denier!"
"Don't judge Phœbus by the shabby way men used you!"
"As I've said before: my men paid. Phœbus would have let you hang – perhaps me, too, from the way that wretch Henriet handled us both! Admit it!"
"That wasn't his fault!"
"No? When you called his name and got us both near killed, your pretty captain rode on his pretty way, without so much as a pretty backward glance – just as he was willing to let you hang for his murder, though he was alive."
"He was wounded."
"He was betrothed – and to a wealthy young lady: do you think he'd risk all that for you? At least priests don't have earthly brides!"
"That's an even greater sin."
Pâquette shrugged her thin shoulders. "Most pleasures are deemed sin, especially for us women. But that's why we have penance and absolution, so they can be wiped away. I spent fifteen years in a cell, praying and starving and flogging myself, all to win you back. And since I've found you – well, God and His blessed Mother must have forgiven me!"
"But that doesn't mean you should return to it afterwards!"
"Are you sure it was thieves and not nuns who raised you, child? For I'm sure those aren't the morals of the Cour des Miracles!"
"All I wanted was a fine young gentleman to love me!"
"You had a fine young gentleman – rich and powerful and learned – throwing himself, weeping and bleeding, at your feet, and what do you do but drive him mad by denying him even a little 'mercy'?"
Her daughter gasped. "'Young gentleman'? He's an old man! What is he – thirty-five?" (Like most sixteen-year-olds, she regarded anyone past thirty as almost senile.)
Pâquette's mouth hardened. "Yes: he's about my age: in his prime, I'd say! And such an innocent that I've seen him cross himself if so much as a pretty girl's shadow crossed his path as he walked in the Grève! You could have led a man like that by the nose as easily as Djali – strung him along on promises, without giving away even a kiss, if you'd been so minded!"
"But he's ugly!" She knew this was untrue, but still it was what she told herself, for he had seemed ugly then, ugly in his deeds, scowling and cursing her from beneath his black hood, or falling upon her, gaunt and writhing and sweating in his chemise, that terrible night.
"What? It's true he hasn't much hair, but he's tall, and broad-shouldered and small-hipped as a man should be. And such eyes! God's blood, a man with eyes like that oughtn't to be a priest in the first place! It's a devilish waste, and a cruel temptation!"
"Well, if you think he's such a catch, why don't you –?" She could not bring herself to complete the thought.
Her mother shrugged again. "Oh, I might, if I had my beauty back again! And maybe even without it…"
"You can't mean that!"
"Why not? At least he wouldn't be troubling you, then, would he?"
Esméralda twisted her face in disgust. "After all he did to me! All he tried to do!"
"He'd have needed you to show him!" She chuckled. "Dear God, talk of the blind leading the blind…! You want to be safe from him, don't you?"
"Yes, but …"
"Well, here's a serious plan," said Pâquette. "You already have a husband, haven't you?"
"Not really."
"Then make it 'really': marry him properly. None of these broken jugs and four-year contracts!"
"I saved his neck, then he saved mine, so the debt between us is paid. I don't love him!"
"So what? This is marriage we're talking about, not love: that can come later, if ever."
"But they've been friends for years: that's why Pierre took Djali and left me with him! I could kick him for that!"
"And that's why your safety lies in him, because he wants no harm to either you or Dom Claude. Carry on with this Phœbus nonsense, and you'll drive him away!"
The girl sniffed. "I'm not sure I'd miss him much. He looks like a mop, with string for hair, and talks lots of nonsense about poetry and philosophy."
"He's an interesting lad, if you'd listen to what he says! Djali would miss him greatly. I think that goat's a better judge of people than you are!"
"She's just got used to being spoilt." (Much like you, Pâquette thought, but did not say.) "He has become quite a good juggler, though. The audience seems to like him."
"See? He has his uses!"
"I suppose so…" she said with a sigh. "So what would I have to do, then?"
"Just find yourself an understanding priest." And she added mischievously: "There's one upstairs…"
Esméralda threw down her sewing and stormed off.
Pâquette shook her head, and continued embroidering. Sometimes she wondered whether she would have done better to keep the gypsy changeling who had been left in her daughter's place: assuredly, he could not have been much more half-witted. But he must be long dead now, she thought; no-one in Reims would have wanted such an accursed-looking brat. The poor little wretch had probably been thrown in the Vesle. Still, he would have been unlikely to reach manhood anyway, all twisted up as he was.
Next chapter: Esméralda returns to Notre Dame, and meets a man of consequence
*The Rue Tirechappe was between the Rue Béthisy and the Rue Saint-Honoré (on the site of the modern Rue du Pont-Neuf between the Rue de Rivoli and the Rue Saint-Honoré). Since the College de Lisieux (also known as Torci or Torchi) was on the Rue Saint-Étienne, near the Porte Saint-Jacques, Claude had had to run right across the city to get home.