To Lie With Lions: The Sixth Book of the House of Niccolo Page 6
‘She has a nephew called Henry already,’ Nicholas said. ‘As you know, madame. By your kindness, he attends your school of children here sometimes, I am told.’
‘You might have found him here, had you been a week or two earlier,’ said the Queen. ‘His grandfather took him away to reunite him with his father, who was going to his Portuguese property. A beautiful boy. Father Perrott will miss him. And now here are the lions. Or perhaps you are tired?’
To visit the gardens was to visit the menagerie. He had known he would be thrust again among animals; the ubiquitous animals; the intrusive, inescapable bestiary which sometimes seemed more real than his life. He could see ostriches in the distance. He disclaimed being tired, was introduced to Master Guillaume, and heard of the gross consumption and ferocious temper of lions – six hundred sheep, the butcher kept handy to feed them! – and of poor Martin who died, despite the ministrations of the barber, the surgeon and the King’s physician Pierre Robin himself.
Of course, René’s ring bore a lion as one of its supporters. The Queen, smiling, made a joke about St Pol de Léon and his son’s Breton name. The Lion of St Mark was the symbol of Venice; the lion flew on the flags of Cyprus, of Scotland, of England, of Burgundy; it appeared on the royal arms of Denmark, and on the badge of Eleanor of the Tyrol. The Queen was offering him a cured lion skin (that of Martin, he belatedly realised), and he was refusing.
He saw the monkeys, the dromedaries, the peacocks. He visited the aviary gallery and met Master Bertrand, who wished to show him a cage full of parrots. Some of them mimicked the human voice in langue d’oc, which was different from Greek. In Amboise, they said, all the parrots shouted Péronne; being sequestered by Louis for having been taught to insult him. Poor France.
He was introduced to the wife of Master Bertrand who was black and slender and Moorish. Her name was Cresselle and she spoke Mandingua. He said one word in automatic response and when she looked at him in shock, turned blindly away.
No one had heard. He found himself at the edge of the moat which, instead of water, held a grunting, stinking group of wild boars. This time, Nicholas turned so abruptly that he had to sway to avoid a man who had just walked quietly down from the drawbridge. From his features he was a Jew, a race which King René tolerated more than most rulers, but his scarlet robe and cap carried no emblem.
‘M. Pierre,’ said the Queen, who was nearer than Nicholas had realised. ‘I hoped you would be here. This is Ser Nicholas de Fleury of Venice and Bruges, the guest of monseigneur.’
‘I am sorry,’ Nicholas said. ‘The boars startled me.’
The man smiled. ‘You mistake. I am not their keeper, but merely a doctor of medicine. Although I do not feel as violently about them as you do. You have always disliked them?’
‘M. de Fleury has had enough of animals,’ said the Queen. ‘And I must go back. You will allow M. de Hurion and Le Prieur to show you where the play is to be staged? Truly, it would interest you.’
‘Perhaps I too might accompany M. de Fleury,’ said the Jew baptised Pierre. ‘The tortures of St Vincent are certainly not to be missed. You may find it hard to choose what you wish to see first: Paradise or the gridiron?’
‘How reassuring,’ said Nicholas, ‘unlike St Vincent, to be given a choice. The gridiron, of course.’
The Queen gave a faint smile and turned to leave. He bowed and saw that she had stopped, as if by impulse, to add something in private. ‘Forgive us if we seem preoccupied. You have seen the King in his sorrow. The prince his grandson is only seventeen. And whatever may happen in England, the King of France has a power which my lord has no means to resist. We cannot even protect our friends.’
‘Your friends understand that,’ Nicholas said. He kept his breathing quite even.
‘Do they?’ she said. ‘Do they understand that if York regains the throne of England, if my lord can be accused of sympathising with Brittany, or entertaining thoughts of turning to Burgundy, Anjou will be taken from him?’
‘Whether monseigneur your husband is guilty of them or not,’ Nicholas said, ‘he will be accused of either or both of these things, should King Louis decide to evict him. Or I should not be here, endangering both you and myself.’
They looked at one another. ‘What you say is true,’ said the Queen. ‘And indeed, Provence is beautiful. The grape is better here, and the Loire is sand, and not salt. But Provence is beautiful.’ She turned to leave. There had been tears in her eyes.
‘You have seen the gridiron, M. de Fleury,’ said the herald Ardent Désir with bitterness. ‘Come now and see God and His angels.’
The play was to take place in the Cattle Market. The immense elevated frame of the royal stand was already there, its new-shorn wood protected by sheets of tarred canvas. As they arrived, a youth in leather apron and leggings hurried forward calling ‘M. Le Prieur!’ The flapped cap on his head enclosed a fresh face of painful anxiety.
‘Eve,’ indicated M. Le Prieur. ‘Also Isachor, Architriclin and Tubal the Paralytic. The son of a smith. His father has just given us five thousand nails.’
‘How …?’ Nicholas said. He had noticed a man with two hutches of rabbits. The alcohol stirred in his veins. Despite himself, happiness, recently rediscovered, suddenly appeared like a ghost.
‘With a fig-leaf,’ said Le Prieur briefly. ‘Both Adam and Eve are born with a fig-leaf. Excuse me.’ He stepped aside.
‘M. Le Prieur is Adam,’ said Ardent Désir mellifluously. ‘If, that is, we are to present The Creation, as planned. Since the death in Spain of the prince, roi monseigneur has asked us to consider instead the Mystère of St Vincent of Saragossa, the Catalonian martyr. It has caused certain problems. Come. Come to the workshop.’
‘Problems?’ Nicholas said. They began to cross over the square. The Jew followed.
‘Six months of preparation,’ said Ardent Désir. ‘Bestow a little thought on what must be arranged for these plays? For the Multiplication des Pains, six dozen loaves from some baker, to be replaced at starvation prices when eaten. For the Décollation of St Jehan Baptiste, a second head, with the best type of blood. Sodom and Gomorrah one could run for a month, except that more wish to take part than to watch. As for the Judas’s death! Yci creve Judas par le ventre et les trippes saillent dehors: it sounds simple. But the Superintendent must fashion the tripes, order the soul, commission the device for their ejection.’
‘And produce the rabbits for The Creation,’ Nicholas suggested helpfully.
‘You see the trouble?’ said Ardent Désir with exasperation. ‘No play demands so much as The Creation! You say it is easy: a snake, a cloud, a maisonette for Adam and Eve. But the doves, the coneys, the fish, what of these? Compared with which, St Vincent is simple – a mere engine of torture, and some blood.’
‘Heaven and Hell,’ said the Jew. They had come to a large shuttered warehouse.
‘One can hardly escape Heaven and Hell,’ said Ardent Désir, ‘in any play. It is my contention that the Creation should be abandoned. Let us have the noble St Vincent, whose instruments, if well greased, will suffer no harm however long the play is deferred.’ He began to declaim. ‘O l’aide Dieu, createur tout puissant; par le congé de vous, tresnoble roy; noble prince, nature cognoissant …’
‘You have a rôle in St Vincent?’ asked Nicholas.
‘I,’ said M. de Hurion, ‘am the Prologue,’ and, flinging open the doors, walked into the workshop.
Nicholas hesitated. ‘As you perceived,’ said the Jew at his ear. ‘The flaming city of Ai reflecting the infernal city of Dis. Each gentleman has a stake in one play, and each is reluctant to concede. But indeed, M. de Hurion is eloquent as the Prologue, just as M. Le Prieur is a magnificent Adam. Have you a minute?’
He held one in his hand: a thick wad of paper slipped from the sleeve of his robe.
‘The script?’ said Nicholas.
‘A summary of it. The blanks represent the comedy interludes, in the hands of Les Chinchins.’
‘Le Crapault d’Enfer,’ said M. Pierre. ‘It is a long play. Fifteen thousand verses, sixty actors and three days to perform it. Text in French, directions in cooking-Latin, comedy inadvertently in bas-auvergnat, but we needn’t go into that. I am told that you practise the art of divining.’
‘You are mistaken. What is the wheel?’
‘According to requirements, the Wheel of the Damned, or that which represents nine choirs of angels in nine circles of fire. Come down. It is not at all safe.’
There were platforms at the end of each spoke, some with dummies on them. Having climbed halfway up, Nicholas inserted himself beside a pliant angel with tall feather wings. He made no attempt to come down.
He had seen a lot of Mystery Plays. He had acted in some. Ardent Désir had reappeared and the other officer, Le Prieur, walked in and stood by the door, somewhat flushed. The doctor Pierre, standing still, had no expression on his upturned face at all. But then, he was sober.
So damn them all. ‘Thunder for God, if you please,’ Nicholas said. Without particular haste the thunder basket was brought and the handle turned. The stones rumbled. The copper sheet rippled and sighed. In the voice of God, Nicholas addressed himself, with sonority, to the doctor.
‘Ha! Meschant homme, qu’as tu fait
Fors ordure et sterilité!’
He paused, to permit a chorus of sardonic approval. The actor Le Prieur moved forward, looking astonished. The angel said, ‘You have stood on my toe!’
‘Don’t interrupt. I thought you were a dummy,’ Nicholas said. He saw, looking closer, that the angel sharing his platform was a boy in a mask. Half of the angels were children.
‘He is a dummy!’ someone roared from the floor. ‘Vacquenet the butcher’s son! Stamp on his other toe, God!’
‘Merde!’ said the angel. ‘Get off!’
There was a vacant platform above him. Nicholas swung himself up, the wheel rocking. A voice addressed him from below. ‘M. de Fleury! Our friends are here to rehearse some of the music. Perhaps …’
‘Perhaps what?’ said Nicholas. Somewhere, a little drum had started to beat. The angels ruffled their feathers and coughed. A flute added itself to the drum.
‘Perhaps,’ said M. Pierre the doctor, stooping gently, ‘we should test the wheel and the music together.’ Then he straightened and looked up at Nicholas as the wheel began to revolve. The angels shrieked, engraving a fillet of sound as they wheeled.
Nicholas said, ‘So what music?’
The piece was in three parts for the Trinity: the minute, when he thumbed over the pages, remarked, Icy parle Dieu à III voix. The wheel creaked, moving slowly; each time it shook, the angels cried. Nicholas said, ‘Well, let’s get going. I’ll count three, then come in.’ He reached up and laying hands on a very young heavenly body, plucked him down and sat him on his knee. He said, ‘Come. Take off your mask, and we shall do it together.’ He wondered whose son this was.
Cheeringly, this angel was friendly. Uncertain at first, its voice gradually strengthened, and another voice joined it. The music was simple. Nicholas sang peacefully along with it, picking it up, following the three strands as they appeared until the entire choir was in voice, interrupting itself at intervals as the wheel jolted or jammed, less to cry than to giggle. Then he called for a drum and two sticks and, when they were tossed up, launched into a staccato outburst of sound, to which with effortless clarity he added the words of a tavern song everyone knew.
The choir tittered and sang; the workers below roared along with them, and swayed. A man on the Ascension pulley swung himself rhythmically up and down bawling, and two devils mounted the wheel, which rocked and began to move faster. Nicholas set down his drum, singing still. ‘And that’s enough,’ he said placidly to the cherubim on his knee. ‘When we arrive close to the ground, you will jump. And you, monsieur, and you.’
The wheel turned. His hands round its waist, Nicholas released his angel, a butterfly, into the waiting hands below. A second jumped, and a third. Last of all he stepped down himself, a devil under each arm, his drum hung round his neck and the sticks in his belt. Le Prieur and Ardent Désir were waiting for him, brandishing scripts, uttering blandishments.
‘Abraham! Noah! Monsieur, the blessed St Vincent himself!’
The angels were tugging his arms. He laughed. ‘You flatter me. Anjou can provide all the talent you need. And in any case, alas, I must go.’
M. Pierre had not spoken.
‘You are a guest of monseigneur,’ said Le Prieur. ‘He will invite you, as I do, to stay.’
‘I have obligations,’ said Nicholas. ‘And at present, monseigneur awaits. Please forgive me.’ He had to raise his voice against the shouting and singing.
‘Come with me,’ said M. Pierre.
Nicholas was sorry to leave. He liked people, and music and laughter. He would like to have investigated the circles of fire, and braced the wheel really well. He was hungry, not for royal food but for bread and cheese and radishes and cheerful company. Thinking of it, he followed M. Pierre carefully along a passage and through a doorway into a room which became perfectly quiet when the door closed. Nicholas returned from his thoughts with some suddenness.
He had moved out of the warehouse to another house which clearly adjoined it. He stood in a chamber whose furnishings – trestles, brazier, instruments – were familiar to him from other rooms, including that of his own company doctor and another, in Cyprus. Except that Tobie had never employed a table covered in black, with a copper bowl of liquid set in its centre, the rim engraved with strange letters.
The only seats in the room stood before it. Nicholas looked at the man who had brought him and spoke, slurring a little. ‘I have nothing to say to you.’
‘You are not surprised,’ said the Jew baptised M. Pierre. ‘The Queen, I suppose, asked if you predicted the future. And you said you did not.’
‘It is the truth,’ Nicholas said.
‘Perhaps. Sometimes we perceive one truth, and a bystander sees another. But if I ask you directly, now we are alone, whether using a rod or a pendulum, you can trace a human being, you would not deny it?’
‘No,’ said Nicholas at length. All the laughter had gone, but not all of the wine. A wave of anxiety turned him cold.
‘No. This is not some idle test. I do not ask you to prove it. I wanted to meet you. Our mutual friend Dr Andreas of Vesalia sometimes visits the Loire. I wished to offer you a present.’
‘Fa me indovino, et iou te davo dinare?’ Nicholas said.
‘I ask for no money. The gift is your own, and I propose only to free it. I know what rumours have said of your son and your lady. I know that if you have left them, you must be very sure where they are. Is your pendulum with you?’
‘No,’ said Nicholas.
There was a silence which he made no effort to break. Then the other man said, ‘So be it. I could not harm him, you must know that. As his father, your power is unbreakable. If I had something of his, I could answer your question.’
Nicholas walked to the stool and subsided. ‘Which is?’
‘It need not be spoken,’ said M. Pierre. He sat opposite. His gaze remained level. ‘A pendulum is only a weight on a cord. You ask it questions and it replies yes, or no. This is a little different. Your answer is more complete. It is spelled.’
Nicholas sat, his unseeing eyes on the bowl. In his purse was a thread, and bound to one end was a carob seed: the pendulum whose presence he had denied. His son was in Dijon. The pendulum told him that every day, as any expert could guess: his finger was inflamed with the rub of
the thread. The man said, ‘Please accept. I should balance one thing with another.’
Nicholas looked at him then. The eyes, darker grey than his own, remained level, and the lips within the brown beard, although authoritarian in set, were not without sensibility. Against his better judgement, Nicholas drew the fragile thing from his purse and handed it over.
It dangled over the bowl. The warmth of the sinking sun roused the oil in the fabric that covered the window, and hazed the copper with light. The little play-token hung, motionless, its cord in the Jew’s strong, clean hand. Then it stirred.
It was very quiet. If the revels continued in the next building, they didn’t penetrate here. The only sound was the chime of the seed as it shivered, and swung, and, spacing each swing and each movement, touched the rim of the vessel five times.
The doctor holding the cord had not been told what its owner was asking. Nicholas, bedevilled by the mists of the future, hardly knew himself what most he needed to know, so ominous and diffuse he felt the shades around him to be. He simply opened the doors of his mind, so that there was nothing between him and the man who held his son’s treasure. And the carob set to its work, and spelled out a name.
The seed stilled. The Jew looked at him. He must have worn a puzzled expression because M. Pierre drew back and said, ‘You are disappointed. Would you like me to do it again?’ His gaze remained calm, although this time Nicholas was conscious of some sounds of activity distantly in the passage and the trampling of horses outside, enough to break the concentration. But when, as he nodded, the pendulum began its travail again, the result was the same.
A name. Not a place-name, the name of a person. The name ROBIN.
It was a relief. Nicholas stood. He collected the pendulum from the long palm of the other and, holding it for a moment, made it his own again before putting it away. Architects, glass-makers, doctors, the family Robin were known throughout Anjou and Provence. He thought of the lion Martin and smiled. It was a crooked smile, because the trampling was coming nearer. Not the feet of angels, but of six men at least, outside the window and door. He had been kept there very artfully. But then he had known what might happen. We cannot even protect our friends.