9: A Man of Consequence & a Woman of None

…Ubi est antiquus
meus amicus?
Hinc equitavit,
eia, quis me amavit?

(…Where is my lover
of former time?
He's ridden from here,
Alas! Who shall love me?)

Anon. 12-13C, Floret silva nobilis (Carmina Burana MS)

After sleeping on it, Esméralda conceded that her mother might have a point, after all. She ought to discuss the matter with a priest – a safe one, perhaps the little man who came to the house with the Host for the invalid archdeacon and Old Geoffroi. He might, at the very least, be able to tell her whether or not she was really married.

Pierre was in the yard, brushing Djali, despite interruptions from young Simon (mostly in the form of loud swearing) while he cleaned the hen-house, and from Pâquette, who was doing more sewing. As far as Esméralda could tell, her mother was always pestering him with pointless questions on useless subjects. She hoped she was not flirting with him: that would be indecent in such an old woman, although she was beginning to look slightly less cadaverous these days.

"So whose idea was that, then, about beauty on the outside showing beauty on the inside?" Pâquette asked in a sceptical tone.

"Plato, if I recall aright."

"Who's he?"

"A Greek philosopher. One of the wisest, along with Aristotle. He teaches that the beauty of the outward form reflects what lies beneath."

That's obvious, Esméralda thought: it was just common sense, and didn't need any kind of fancy Greek name attaching to it.

"He's a fool, then!" said her mother, with a frown. "I don't care how wise you say he is!"

"Was."

"I mean, he hadn't met some of my old customers! The two things don't always go together."

Esméralda winced. Would she never be allowed to forget what her mother was?

"Well, I grant you, you have a point there, but it's not quite as simple as that! As my master used to explain to me –"

"–And much good it's done him, near killing himself! Is he any better today?"

Pierre sighed. "He's broken." There was no other word for it. "–But as I was saying, he used to explain to me it's a question of how one defines 'beauty'. One could, of course, consult Aristotle –"

Esméralda cleared her throat and interrupted. "Pierre, you won't forget to give Djali's hooves a good polish, will you?"

He glanced up at her with a show of merriment. "Forget her hooves? The daintiest hooves that ever trod cobblestone? How could I?"

Djali bleated haughtily, confident of her own charms.

"Now, this goat," he said to his mother-in-law, "this goat is a fine example of Plato's thinking: a creature who embodies beauty and virtue in every aspect – appearance and character!"

"Not quite," Pâquette said. "She ate one of Sister Catherine's stockings from the laundry yesterday."

"– Apart from her tendency towards gluttony, then! If there is a Platonic ideal of goathood, of essential capritas, or perhaps capritudo, to coin a phrase – yes, I think I prefer capritudo, with capritudinis in the genitive, to decline like pulchritudo – then surely Djali measures up –"

Esméralda rolled her eyes, but Pâquette narrowed hers, noticing that her daughter was dressed quite respectably, for going out. "Where are you off to, my girl?"

"I'm taking your advice. I'm going to see a priest."

Pierre looked puzzled. Pâquette whispered to him. He shrugged, and continued to wax eloquent on the twin subjects of philosophy and goats, to both of which he was much devoted. Djali listened quite as attentively as the woman, with one soft ear cocked.

Esméralda breathed hard, feeling her heart race as she gazed up at the towers of Notre Dame. Since she had been living with the Sisters, the whole household (with Old Geoffroi on his sticks, but bar the archdeacon and whichever sister was sitting with him) attended Mass at Saint Christophe's, beside the cathedral. She regarded the mother church with foreboding. Bad memories… But she would be safe there now, would she not? The danger that had lurked within the massive stone walls now lay beneath her own roof. She shuddered at the thought.

It was impossible to believe now that, only a couple of months ago, the Parvis had been the site of a massacre. No trace of it remained. Indeed, even at daybreak, as Claude had clung so desperately to the guttering high above, and Esméralda and Pâquette had been dragged from the cell, the square had been cleared of debris and the dead. The corpses had been flung into the Seine, to be fished out and robbed of their clothes by those wretches who made their living as scavengers, under the bridges and along the banks.

She looked up at the great, sculpted tympana above the west portals: the Last Judgement occupied the central one, flanked by Our Lady's early life and enthronement, and by her dormition and coronation. The theology confused her even more than the ideas Pierre was teaching her mother. She feared the judge and the vividly-painted demons tormenting souls in Hell, and so she passed through the portal named for Saint Anne, over which her daughter sat in majesty, flanked by censer-swinging angels.

She crossed herself as she entered the nave, bright with paintings and sunlit glass, its numerous side-altars lit with candles. From the gallery of the triforium, an ungainly but gaudily-coloured figure gazed down upon her…

Quasimodo had watched as his master was borne away on a plank, apparently lifeless; then, he had turned his one good eye again upon the commotion in the Grève. He had wept bitterly, believing that the only two people for whom he had ever cared were lost to him forever.

A little later, after giving Dom Claude the Viaticum, Father Thierry had found the boy huddled mournfully in his room, poking at the flesh-wound which Jehan's arrow had made in his arm. He sent for a sister from the Hôtel-Dieu to tend him. He reassured him, making him understand that his master lived, and was being cared for. When Quasimodo asked after Esméralda, he said that he did not know for certain what had befallen her, but he believed that she, too, lived: certainly he had not heard of an execution that morning.

At first, Quasimodo rejoiced. But then, it occurred to him that he might be punished for having pushed his master from the tower. He knew his master was already angry with him for beating him that night Esméralda had summoned him with the whistle. It would be better not to speak of it to the fathers, he decided. It was punishment enough to think that his master was injured. He hoped desperately that, once Dom Claude recovered, their lives could return to what he perceived as their former happiness, before that night: the two of them, together with Esméralda and her goat. He was ignorant of the depth of the torment his master had endured since late last year. And he had no idea, in his battle-fury, that the armoured figure he had shelled like a crab and smashed against the wall had been Jehan, nor that the rest of the 'enemy' he had slain had been Esméralda's friends.

He was, therefore, alarmed when he was summoned to the Bishop's Palace, for an audience with Monseigneur the Bishop of Paris himself. Did he know what he had done to the archdeacon? He had used the builders' stone, wood and lead to repel the attackers, and that might be considered stealing, which his master had always taught him was wrong. He feared the pillory again. But he dared say nothing of this to Father Thierry and Father Nicolas. They made sure that he was clean, and had combed his hair, and that he was dressed smartly in his official bell-ringer's livery of red and violet.

To his relief, Monseigneur Louis de Beaumont de la Forêt, stout and richly robed, received him graciously. And by his side there was a long-nosed, wizened man in black velvet, who looked much older than his sixty years. He was almost as bent over as himself, and moved awkwardly, having been partially paralysed by strokes of apoplexy. He reminded Quasimodo of a spider – an old spider, who had been reduced to four feeble limbs. His only adornment was a heavy collar of gold cockle-shells.

"The bishop tells me you are deaf, my boy," the old man said, taking care to speak loudly and with as clear an articulation as he could muster, given that one corner of his mouth drooped somewhat.

"Yes, monsieur." He was already on his knees.

"Half-blind, too, I see. And – Pasque-Dieu! – I fear, misshapen in every quarter! Yet, without you, I am sure that the royal troops could not have saved the cathedral from being despoiled by that rabble of brigands. You – and you alone – held them off valiantly until the soldiers arrived. It was little short of a miracle."

"Indeed, sire," added the bishop, "I cannot but see Our Lady's own hand in it."

The old man in black nodded. "Assuredly a miracle, Pasque-Dieu!"

"Thank you, monsieur," the youth answered. He had not been able to follow every word, but he understood from their expressions that they were very pleased with him.

"Do you know who I am?"

Quasimodo shook his head.

"I'm acquaint with your master, since this past December. I told him I was the Abbot of Saint Martin of Tours, as, indeed, I am."

"That's my birthday."

"What is?"

"Martinmas. I'll be twenty this Martinmas, my lord abbot!"

"A patriot from the cradle, then, Pasque-Dieu! – But it's not as Abbot of Saint Martin that I wish to reward you, but as King of France, do you hear? King of France!"

Quasimodo gawped. He had only ever seen the king at a distance, in processions on feast-days. (In truth, he had expected someone of more impressive appearance.)

"On the great feasts, I hope Monseigneur the Bishop will be so good as to lend you to me, to ring at my Sainte-Chapelle."

"And leave my bells?"

"To meet some others – some royal bells. Would you like that, my boy?"

"My bells are Our Lady's."

"Indeed, and you shall still have the care of them, because you saved them and the cathedral from desecration and despoiling. But it is my will that you ring for me at the Sainte-Chapelle, when I desire it: my will, do you understand?"

It sank in that this was a command, not a request. He was torn. It would mean entrusting his bells to some other ringer on the feasts, and yet… More bells? New bells to ring?

"You have none great as my Jacqueline or Marie. And I have my Guillaume, and Thibaut, and Gabrielle, and even little Pasquier!"

"That's true," said the king, smiling crookedly, "but you shall tread where St Louis himself has trod, and you shall see Our Lord's Crown of Thorns. I shall introduce you to the canons there, and to the chaplain of my private chapel, Father Jehan. He, too, makes music." He turned sadly to the bishop: "But it's a pity this poor child cannot hear it!"

The bishop nodded, for the chaplain in question was none other than Jehan de Ockeghem, one of the greatest composers of the age, whom Josquin des Prez would later commemorate with his haunting Nymphes des bois.

"And a stipend, I think, in addition to his current salary. What do you think, monseigneur – twenty livres parisis, per annum?"

The bishop scratched his several chins. For a youth such as Quasimodo, it was a generous sum, but all the same, the king had a reputation for stinginess, and the boy had, single-handedly, saved Notre Dame from sack. "I should say thirty."

The king scowled. "Better make it forty, then, with half the sum contributed from episcopal coffers, of course. I'm sure you cannot object to that!"

Louis de Beaumont sighed, but he was forced to agree. "Yes, Quasimodo: you shall have forty livres a year, for life!"

Quasimodo knew this was a fine reward – but his needs were few, and it meant far less to him than having new bells to ring.

"He is the Archdeacon of Josas's ward, too, so it's only right that the Church should contribute generously," added the king. "By the by, how fares Dom Claude?"

"He's with the Sisterhood of St Anne. According to Mother Sibylle, it'll be some time before he has the strength to return to his post. I've had to split his duties between the other archdeacons, both of whom are whining about it!"

"That's unfortunate!"

"Yes! He's a remarkable fellow: old Chartier ordained him when he was under-age – with papal dispensation – and he's been a protégé of mine these ten years! Mind, he's always driven himself too hard: I don't think he's been entirely well since last winter."

The king nodded in agreement, and gave a cough. "Neither have I, monseigneur! Neither have I! How these old bones creak…! Are Mother Sibylle's tisanes as effective as my good friend Compère Coictier's, I wonder…" He turned back to Quasimodo: "You can get up now, boy!"

The bell-ringer staggered clumsily to his feet: with his knock-knees and bowed calves, kneeling was never comfortable for him. He felt dazed, dazzled.

The king shook his head at the bishop. "Oh! The lad needs a decent hair-cut! It's bad enough that he's as red-haired as Judas, and crooked, Pasque-Dieu! My Olivier shall attend to it. How useful it is to have a barber as one's confidant! But then one must always trust the man who holds a razor to your throat…"

"Very true, sire!" the bishop nodded. "And what about the cause of all this nonsense, that wench with the goat?"

The king stroked his long nose pensively. "Ah, yes: the so-called gypsy… I'll do what I can: I daresay it was her pimp who stabbed the captain. Well, that's a lesson to young men who dress far too richly for cheap brothels."

"You know we can't have anything that looks bad, sire: after all, her mother's practically a living saint!"

"The anchoress? Indeed, indeed… There must be no shame for her, nor scandal for the Church!"

Quasimodo could follow none of this, but he caught the word "gypsy", which lightened his heart still more.

"Hmm… And I think some sort of additional badge of office is called for…"

And so, Esméralda heard footsteps behind her in the cathedral: strange and irregular steps, limping, but quick. It was Quasimodo. Over his usual livery of parti-coloured red and violet, embroidered with silver bells, he now wore a sash of brilliant blue, worked with the royal lilies in gold. Given his bright red hair (tidier than usual), the overall effect was startling, like that of full sunlight through the vivid cathedral windows.

"You've come back," he said in his halting, heavy-tongued speech.

"Yes, yes…" she said, nodding to emphasise her meaning.

"You're safe!" And he scuttled towards her, to embrace her. "I thought… I thought they'd hanged you!"

"No… almost, but no…" She squirmed as he hugged her tightly: he did not know his own strength. She was grateful for his saving her life, and defence of her virtue against that vile old priest; yet he had slaughtered her friends, and still she found him physically repellent. His whole form was proof that he was accursed. His face, pressed close to hers, terrified her, with one good eye, and the other, under-developed, half-buried by a warty growth in the socket. The Evil Eye, she thought. It went with red hair, so the gypsies had always told her, for it was rare in their race.

"I hurt my arm, but it's better now. And I'm famous! See what the king gave me?" He tugged at the sash, showing off like a small child.

She forced herself to smile. "That's very fine. Very handsome."

He sighed. "But not as handsome as the Captain of Archers."

She tried to be diplomatic. "Perhaps not, but very fine for a bell-ringer!"

"He wants me to ring the great feasts at the Sainte-Chapelle!"

"That's a great honour! I'm sure your master will be pleased," she said. Although the merest thought of the archdeacon sickened her, it was difficult to know what else to say: small-talk with Quasimodo was never easy.

"My master's not here. He got hurt, too."

"I know," she said. "He fell."

"I'm sorry now, though I wasn't then. He shouldn't have laughed at you." What did he mean by that, she wondered. He continued: "I thought they'd hanged you, you see, when he laughed. But the other fathers say he's getting better."

"Yes, he is." But she wished he were not.

"I'm glad!" He laughed grotesquely with his horseshoe mouth and crooked tombstone teeth. "Because I love you both."

"Please don't say that, Quasimodo!"

"Why? I-I do! He shouldn't have tried to hurt you, but… you and he… I love you."

"Love?"

"Yes. Since you brought me water… He made me steal you. But he raised me. I couldn't choose, you see. If I'd lost you both… I couldn't live."

"I understand, but –" Oh God! She had never imagined this.

"– But I know you don't love me… I'm not handsome."

"It's not that," she lied. "It's more that… I already have a husband, you see. Sort of."

Quasimodo looked as surprised as his distorted features allowed. This was the first he had heard of it: never once had Esméralda spoken of a husband while she had been in sanctuary. Where had he been when he was needed? "Who?"

"He works with me – with Djali. You must have seen him: tall, thin, blond, looks like this!" And she sucked in her cheeks and attempted an impersonation of Pierre's stance and expression. "Pierre Gringoire. Yes? You understand?"

Quasimodo chuckled. " Oh! At my master's rooms in the cloister… He had lessons. Sometimes both of us together!"

Of course… She should have remembered. All of them were linked, all of them flies caught in one web. But who was the spider?

"Gringoire… Yes, he's kind. He was kind to me. I could still hear then, when first he came."

"Yes. He's a good man."

"But he's not handsome."

"No, not very. He looks like a mop. You know, for cleaning floors." She gestured appropriately.

"He's not handsome, and yet you love him…"

"No, I… I mean, yes. Yes, I do. I saved his life, and he mine."

"But I saved you. And I love you. I have money, too, now. The king gave me money."

"Good. That's good! For you! But – I have a husband, and a mother. I have a family, in fact."

"I didn't know."

"Neither did I, until… A lot of things have happened, Quasimodo, not all of them good, but… Sister Gudule, from the Grève, is my mother: you remember her? So I'm not an orphan any more."

"Oh." She could not be sure whether he looked hurt or not. (In fact, he was remembering Sister Gudule, and puzzling how she could be anyone's mother, least of all the mother of someone as beautiful as Esméralda.)

"I'm very happy for you. Are you happy for me?"

He nodded. "You will visit me again?"

She glanced around, nervously. "Yes, of course. You're my friend." But she did not relish the thought, and if he sensed it, he did not show it.

She backed away from him, and lost him among the columns and the knots of worshippers clustered around the many shrines and altars.

She passed a plump, blonde girl of about her own age, kneeling in prayer before one of the many statues of the Virgin. Our Lady, with her serene painted face, wore a crown of gold and jewels, robes embroidered with threads of gold, pearls and beads: she shimmered in the candlelight. The living girl's clothes had a tawdry gaiety, but, on close inspection, were grubby and threadbare, and her eyes were puffy with weeping as she turned towards her:

"La 'Sméralda?"

She stopped. The girl rose to her feet. She recognised her from the Cour des Miracles: one of the cheap jades to whom Pierre had been offered when he was sentenced to hang.

"Isabeau, what's wrong?"

She sniffed, and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. "A bellyful of trouble, no mistake! The old woman made me drinks, but I kept throwing up, so that's useless! And I don't trust her spoons: I've seen girls die of 'em!"

"You're with child?"

The girl narrowed her eyes. "Well, what else, stupid? That's all I need now… Who'd want me with a brat?"

"Where's your lad?"

"I've not seen him for weeks, not since the battle here. He's either dead, or in prison, or else he's run off."

"I'm sorry."

"So you should be!"

"It's not my fault!"

"No? You thought yourself so much better than the rest of us: showing all you'd got, but then coming on all virtuous and touch-me-not! And now all our lads are slain or in prison or fled – on account of saving you!"

She glared in grief and fury; Esméralda flinched. She had, indeed, always considered herself superior to such trollops; but she had never wanted any of this to happen, never thought that Quasimodo would rain down death on her people…

She recalled the youth with whom she had often seen Isabeau: he wore a furred doublet with hanging sleeves and absurdly piked shoes, and was usually drunk. She had never been sure whether he was a regular customer or her pimp. "But your lad looked as if he had money, from the way he dressed – a young gentleman, you said he was."

"Pah!" she spat. "Gentleman? Everything was cadged off his rich brother – even what he paid me… if he paid. Sometimes I was fool enough to give him credit, for his pretty face and curling hair… The pretty men, 'Sméralda – don't you trust 'em, for they'll take all they can for nothing!"

"Well, I hope he turns up again!" she said brusquely.

She did not know what else to say. She wanted to get away from her even more than from Quasimodo. In Isabeau's reddened eyes and dishevelled hair, she saw her mother as a girl – on the streets, pregnant, friendless. She held up a mirror to her own origins, and – if she were honest – what might have been her own future; a mirror into which she did not want to look.

The whore laughed bitterly. "If he does, I'll make him pay, I promise you!" She went on: "And as for that Captain of Archers, why didn't you finish him off good and proper? I mean, Bérarde's not been right since she was with him before Christmas. It's forced her price down, so she can scarce make enough to eat!"

"What?"

Isabeau read Esméralda's expression. "You didn't think you were the first, did you? He likes 'em slim and dark, so she'd never put me with him, but he's always taking girls to the old woman's!"

"Always?"

"She makes a fair bit of money from 'im, for her Sainte-Marthe room, grasping old cow. But I don't think he's clean."

Esméralda could not speak. She glanced imploringly at the statue of the Virgin.

"So you think I shouldn't talk like this in front of her?" Isabeau gestured. "Or has he given you the clap, too?"

"No, he never even –"

"And 'twas he and his men that cut out all lads to pieces in the Parvis. Even Clopin. Good old Clopin, they say he made a brave end, with his scythe! – So I don't know how you can sleep of a night, after all the trouble you've caused! All our lads – between that devil bell-ringer and the pretty captain…!"

"I didn't mean for it to happen!"

"But it did."

"I'm sorry." Esméralda held out her hand in sympathy.

Rather than take it, Isabeau folded her arms. "You won't starve this winter; you have a husband!"

Husband. Again. She recoiled as if she had been struck.

The harlot turned her back, and knelt again in prayer to the merciful Virgin Mother.

Esméralda saw Father Thierry leaving another side altar, where he had been saying Mass, but she could not face the conversation she had planned to have with him. She hurried from the cathedral almost running, back to Widow Dorel's house. Even with the archdeacon abed upstairs, it still seemed safer.

She found Pierre and Pâquette still in the sunlit yard, in an excited state. Djali, whose ability to sense the mood of her humans was unusually acute, was skipping about like a kid, sending the hens flapping in all directions.

"We have received a letter!" Pierre cried, waving it as a baton. "Delivered by a liveried messenger!"

"And sealed with yellow wax!" Pâquette added.

Esméralda blinked. "What is it?"

Pierre grinned. "As your husband, I took the liberty of opening it." He performed an elaborate bow: "My lady," he said, "it's your royal pardon!"

"What? From the king?"

"Signed and sealed by the king and the bishop!" He showed it to her. It was in Latin, in an elaborate hand, and so she was none the wiser.

"What does it say?"

He scratched his chin, and put on his most erudite frown (copied from his old tutor). "Well, it's all couched in very legal Latin, but having had a grounding in law, I can say that it boils down to the following points, which reflect those I myself raised with Messieurs L'Hermite and d'Estouteville in the Grève. Primo, owing to questions raised over your identity, videlicet, your public acknowledgement, before the Provost and other officers of the realm and city, as the child of this renowned and saintly anchoress –" He nodded to Pâquette, who smiled as sweetly as her missing teeth allowed, and dropped a courtesy "– and thus not being a gypsy, you are, apparently, not a sorceress. Secundo, your mother's sacred profession" – Here Pâquette chortled, recalling her true vocation –"and her brave intervention on your behalf mean that it would be a scandal to hang you. Tertio, all evidence reconsidered, it is thought that the person responsible for the assault on Captain de Châteaupers was probably a truand, of sex male, by occupation leno* – Pâsque-Dieu! what a slander! – and therefore was probably slain in the attack upon Notre Dame. And ultimo, it is considered that you have discharged your penance regarding the charge of debauchery and prostitution," Pierre concluded.

"Debauchery and prostitution?" Esméralda gulped.

Her mother, most un-saintly, sniffed. "Yes, I know, dear: it must be disappointing to get the blame without having the pleasure first!" And it was a perfectly natural assumption, under the circumstances, she thought. There was no innocent explanation for being half-naked with a soldier in a cheap house of assignation. "So, did you see a priest?" she asked.

"Yes… erm… No. No, I couldn't."

"Pâquette told me," Pierre said. "I know you only want to feel safe." He knew, too, though, that she did not love him, and that made him uncomfortable.

"Yes," she said with a bitter sigh. "Why is it that the only men who love me are monsters, either within or without, and he that I love may be… false?"

Pierre did not regard himself as a monster; nevertheless, he, Pâquette, and Djali exchanged meaningful glances. Was Esméralda beginning to come to her senses about Phœbus?

"False?" Pâquette echoed.

Esméralda nodded. "I saw Isabeau in the cathedral: she says she's pregnant."

Pierre gasped. "Isabeau? Not Sister Isabeau? She's far too old! I mean, they'd have to start a new religion if she's –"

"No, not her: big, blonde Isabeau from the Cour des Miracles. She blames me for her losing her young man in the fighting… But she said Phœbus – my Phœbus – had taken other girls to that house on the bridge! Perhaps she's just jealous – she seems jealous, because I've still got you, and she has no-one now, but… I don't know! You've said, and mother's said, and even…" She remembered the words of a desperate man in a damp, squalid cell: something about a "wretched, swaggering imbecile". "I mean, other people have spoken against him, but I don't know what to believe! Isabeau said he's made one of the girls ill. I can't imagine, but – but suppose it's true?"

Pierre put his arm around her shoulders reassuringly, and Djali nuzzled her fingers with her pink velvet nose. "Can't we forget about Phœbus for once, eh? The main thing is," he said, wagging the pardon in his free hand, " we are now free of the shadow of the law!"

"Except they still think I'm a whore!"

"There are worse things to be," her mother reminded her.

Pierre nodded. "I think the occasion calls for wine! I'll tell Mother Sibylle what the letter was all about – the sisters were curious as a bunch of old cats when the messenger arrived – and we can kill the fatted calf, or something, so long as it's not a goat!"

Next chapter: Claude sees an old acquaintance in another light

*leno: Lat., pimp.