Paris: The Novel Read online

  “It’s all right because I only come from a merchant family. A bourgeoise.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Oh yes, she knew all right. He was noble, so he considered himself above the rest of humanity. This impoverished, inexperienced, cocky little aristocrat thought he could bed her because his ancestors had been friends of Charlemagne. And he expected her to accept it. Just like that. She had half a mind to throw him out.

  But she didn’t. She was in the mood to make love. And having gone this far, she thought, she might as well get what she wanted. Two people could play the game of using someone.

  He put down his wine, and grinned. She assumed he was about to make a move toward her. But then he paused.

  “I didn’t tell you last time. But I saw your uncle in the market the other day. He stared at me as if he knew me. It was quite frightening. But then I realized it’s just the way he looks. You don’t think he knows about me, do you?”

  “He has no idea. I promise you.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  Now he was ready to make his move. He began kissing her. They rolled onto the straw mattress. Martine was only wearing a shift, but he was still dressed. Young Roland was aroused, and so was she. His hand moved between her legs. She gave a little gasp. Soon afterward, he was pulling down his hose, entering her.

  “Take off your shirt,” she said, pulling at it. Like most people, Roland wore his shirt for a week or more, and it smelled of sweat and the street. But she liked that he washed more than other men she knew. Admittedly, dashing oneself with cold water from a bowl wasn’t much of a bath, but it was as good as it usually got in the Paris of the Crusades. “Ah,” she whispered, “that feels good.” She could smell his sweat, and that faint scent of almonds on his skin. He was getting more and more excited, thrusting rapidly. She arched her back. He pressed himself close.

  And then she frowned. She smelled something else. She thought she must be mistaken. But no, there was no mistake. It was the smell of perfume, but not the kind that she might use. This was the sickly smell of the cheapest kind of perfume that the street girls used to try to hide the fact they hadn’t washed for a month.

  There was only one way that Roland could have got that smell on his skin. She understood in a flash. That’s what he’d been up to last night. Her body went rigid.

  He came. Early.

  Martine did not move. For a moment, a great sense of hurt engulfed her, like a wave. But it quickly receded. She wasn’t in love with him. Then she felt rage. How dare he? She’d offered herself, and he’d run around the corner with some whore he’d picked up God knows where. Had he no respect for her at all? Did he have any idea how lucky he was? She wanted to scream. She wanted to strike him with something, hard and heavy. She wanted to make him suffer.

  But still she lay quite still. He leaned over. She forced herself to smile. Then she put her head on his chest, and stroked it, closing her eyes as if she were drowsy. After a little time she felt his body relax. He was dozing. She pulled away and lay beside him, thinking.

  She gave a small smile of satisfaction. Revenge was a dish best served cold. She was glad, now, that she had kept silent. He would suspect nothing. She closed her eyes.

  It was dawn when she awoke. In the faint light from the shuttered window she could see that he was lying on his side, his head raised on one arm, watching her.

  “At last,” he said. He reached across.

  He kissed her neck and started to move down her body. She let him. It felt good. He wasn’t in a hurry, and nor was she.

  “I’m a little sleepy,” she said. He was hard, and that was what she wanted, too. She let him enter. He was moving slowly and rhythmically, taking his time.

  “You know,” she said softly, “about what you said last night.”

  “You talk when you’re making love?”

  “Sometimes. I mean about my uncle. You don’t have to worry. He has no idea.”

  “Good.”

  “I’d know at once if he did. He’d beat me.”

  “Oh.”

  “He wants me to make a good marriage. As for any man who slept with me … Aiee …”

  “What?”

  “He’d suffer the fate of Abelard.”

  He stopped.

  “You’re not serious.”

  “You don’t know him.”

  “He’d castrate me? Cut off my balls?”

  “Oh, he’d have some roughnecks do it. He has the power.”

  “But I’m a noble.”

  “So was Abelard.” It was true that the great philosopher came from a minor noble family.

  She felt him shrink inside her. She pulled him close.

  “Don’t worry, mon amour, he has no idea,” she coaxed. But Roland’s manhood was in full retreat. “Don’t leave me now,” she whispered. “Finish what you came to do.”

  He pulled away. He glanced at the sliver of light between the shutters.

  “I’d better go,” he said.

  “Will you come back tonight?” she asked.

  “I have to study tonight,” he said.

  “Tomorrow?”

  “If I can.”

  The day passed quietly, giving her time for further reflection. On the whole, she had to admit, it was probably just as well that things had worked out the way they had. She’d been a fool to run such risks. Her little interlude with Roland, such as it was, had made one thing very clear to her. She needed a man in her life again.

  It was time to get married. She could probably get a rich husband. Her uncle would see to that. There were plenty of good men in Paris, so she might as well marry a rich one.

  Roland had to go. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t punish him.

  Could she have been wrong about the other girl? She didn’t think so. Every instinct told her she was right, but she wanted to be certain. By the afternoon she was forming another plan.

  It was evening and the sun was sinking over the Seine when she made her way along to the bridge that led from the Left Bank to the Île de la Cité. Of course, it was possible that he had a girl on the Left Bank, but it would be harder for him to escape detection there. It was far more likely that the other girl was on the northern side of the river. She found a convenient spot on a street corner from which she could observe, and she waited.

  She didn’t have to wait long. He came over the bridge with a jaunty step. So much for studying tonight. She pulled a shawl over her head and followed him at a distance. There were enough people about for her to follow him inconspicuously. Some were standing on the bridge to admire the sunset, and Roland did the same. After that, he continued over to the Right Bank, and went northward until he turned left into the rue Saint-Honoré. She continued to follow. She saw him go into a tavern. She hesitated. If she went in there, people would turn to look. He’d probably see her, and that would be embarrassing. On the other hand, she wanted to know what he was up to. She stood in the street, wondering what to do.

  He obligingly saved her the trouble by coming out again. There was a girl beside him, with a mass of black hair, just the sort of cheap slut, thought Martine, that she’d imagined. She saw him put his arm around the girl, who reached up and pulled his head down to kiss him on the mouth. Martine quickly turned her head so as not to be seen, but they didn’t even glance in her direction.

  For just a moment, she felt a cold shock that he’d betrayed her. But it was followed by a sense of satisfaction. She’d been right. Her senses and her instincts hadn’t let her down. It was time to complete her revenge.

  That evening, finding a moment when the kitchen was empty, she stole in and removed a long kitchen knife that was seldom used. Then, while her uncle was in his counting house, she entered the empty parlor, where there was a large oak table, and spent several minutes stooped over it, apparently examining the grain of the wood.

  The following morning after breakfast, her uncle went out to the Grève market. The cook and the two other servants were in the k
itchen.

  Martine stepped into the parlor. She knew exactly what she had to do. She knew it was going to be painful. But she’d worked it out carefully, tried everything out to make sure that it would work as planned. As she took a deep breath and prepared herself, her whole face was screwed up in anticipation of the pain. If it hadn’t been needed for her revenge, she couldn’t have gone through with it.

  So now, involuntarily crossing herself, she took careful aim, twisted her head so that she shouldn’t break her nose, and let herself fall, hard, against the edge of the big oak table in the middle of the room.

  She didn’t need to fake her howl of pain. The servants came running.

  “I tripped,” she wailed. She saw drops of blood on the floor. She hadn’t meant to break the skin, and hoped it wouldn’t leave a scar. But the main thing was that already, she could feel a huge, throbbing pain around her left eye.

  While the younger servant girl ran to fetch Martine’s uncle home from the market, the cook, a small, vigorous woman, took charge. The cut over the eye wasn’t bad. The cook bathed it, held a wad of cloth over it, and stanched the bleeding. Then she put grease on the cut and wrapped a bandage round Martine’s head. A cold compress helped the swelling.

  “But you’re going to have a big, shiny black eye,” the cook informed her cheerfully.

  By the time her uncle arrived at the house, Martine was quite composed, sitting in the kitchen and taking a little broth. Her face was swelling up nicely. Once he was satisfied that his niece was neither badly injured nor disfigured, her uncle returned to the market, and Martine told the servants that she was going to rest in her room and would come down again at midday.

  Everything was going exactly according to plan.

  She waited in her room for a while, until there was no one out in the yard. Then, slipping the long knife she’d stolen into her belt and concealing it under her gown, she slipped unseen out of the back gate into the alley that Roland had used for his nighttime visits.

  She walked swiftly southward, skirted the Grève marketplace and made toward the river. As she had the evening before, she kept a shawl over her head to hide the bandage.

  It was only a quarter mile to the bridge that crossed from the Right Bank to the Île de la Cité. Just before she reached it, ahead of her, she caught sight of the high roof of the Grand Châtelet, where the provost of Paris dispensed justice to the people. University students like Roland, who only had to answer to the Church courts, were exempt from the provost’s stern rule. Martine smiled to herself. She had a special kind of justice reserved for young Roland de Cygne.

  She crossed to the island. Over the rooftops on her right rose the high vault of the Sainte-Chapelle, gray against the sky. The sacred relics concealed within might bring joy to the king, but the royal reliquary looked like a tall, cold barn to her that day. And the memory of her budding passion for the boy, when they’d gone in there together, was as dead as ashes. She crossed the Seine once more, by the narrow bridge to the Left Bank, and started up the long, straight slope of the rue Saint-Jacques.

  She didn’t often come to the Left Bank. The Latin Quarter, some people were calling it these days, since it had started filling with scholars. She cursed as she almost stepped in a pile of steaming feces that someone must have tossed from an upper window. That’s right, she thought grimly: the scholars could talk Latin and preach in church, but life still came down, in the end, to the same old stink in the street.

  She was nearing the top of the hill. She put her hand down and felt the handle of the long knife under her belt. Ahead of her was the gateway in the city wall through which the Compostela pilgrims passed. She knew Roland’s lodgings were somewhere here. A student came out of a doorway, and she was about to ask him if he knew Roland, when the young man himself appeared, from another house nearby. He saw her and stopped in surprise. She went quickly to his side.

  “We must talk at once,” she said urgently. “Alone.”

  He frowned, but led her a short way along the street and turned into a churchyard. It was quiet there. No one could see them.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked. “I was coming to you tonight.”

  “You can’t,” she said. “Look.” And she pulled back her shawl.

  He stared in surprise at the big red-and-black swelling on her face.

  “My God. What happened?”

  “My uncle. He beat me. He knows about us.” She watched him go pale. “I slipped out of the house to warn you.”

  “How? He was asleep when I left yesterday. I heard him snoring.”

  “The cook saw you. She told him.”

  “He knows who I am?”

  “Not yet. I wouldn’t tell him your name. But he has men out already making inquiries.”

  He looked thoughtful.

  “No one knows. Did the cook get a good look at me?”

  “She gave him a description.”

  “God be damned.”

  “Oh Roland.” She looked pitiful. “He’ll beat me again until I tell him your name. I can’t hold out much longer.”

  Roland looked away for a moment. Cursing his bad luck no doubt. She felt for the knife in her belt, but she didn’t draw it out yet. He turned back at her.

  “You don’t really think …,” he started.

  “Oh Roland,” she cried, “you’ve got to leave Paris. Leave at once.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “You don’t understand. You don’t know him. Once he’s made up his mind … And he has the power.”

  “He’d really have me castrated?” He stared at her in horror.

  “Nothing will stop him. The king couldn’t stop him.”

  He was squirming. She watched him. It was perfect.

  “I can’t leave Paris,” he muttered. “I’ve nowhere to go.”

  “We could run away together,” she said. “I have some money. We could run away to Normandy. Or England.”

  “That won’t do,” he answered, staring at the ground. She knew he’d say that.

  “You don’t want me,” she wailed. “I am lost.”

  “No, no. I care for you,” he answered.

  There was a long pause.

  “He doesn’t mean to kill you,” she pointed out. “That’s something. They say that Abelard was a greater philosopher after it happened to him.”

  It was clear from Roland’s face that philosophy wouldn’t console him.

  “What can I do?” he cried.

  It was time. She reached below her cloak and pulled out the knife. He shrank back.

  “Here,” she said. “It’s for you.”

  “For me?”

  “If they come for you, use it. Don’t hesitate. You won’t have any time. They’ll mean business. But if you can kill them, or wound them, maybe it’ll stop him trying again. It’s your only hope.”

  He took the knife. He weighed it in his hand, and pursed his lips. She saw him glance around.

  And suddenly she thought she read his thoughts. The one thing she hadn’t allowed for. Could it be so? Was he wondering whether he should use the knife to kill her? To get her out of the way? Nobody had seen them. If she was dead, he could be thinking, her uncle would never discover his identity.

  How could she have been so foolish? She’d brought the knife only to make her story seem more convincing. And she’d been so busy plotting her own revenge that she’d overlooked this weakness in the plan. She froze.

  But then he shook his head and gave her back the knife.

  “I have a weapon of my own,” he said. Though whether she had been wrong, or he had calculated the odds and decided against killing her, or his conscience had intervened, she would never know.

  “I must go before I am missed,” she said. “But take care, my Roland. I fear we may never see each other again. May God protect you.” And pushing the knife back into her girdle, and covering her head with her shawl, she hurried out of the churchyard.

  As she went back down the street toward t
he river, she wondered happily how many sleepless nights and nightmares he would suffer, and whether he would run away from Paris. And oh, the pleasure of watching the cocky little swine while he squirmed.

  Revenge was sweet.

  The rest of that day did not go well for Roland. He tried to go about his business. He attended a lecture. He went to his usual tavern, where he met some friends. He longed to share his troubles with them, but didn’t feel that he could. He bought bread, a little cured meat and some beans, and took them back to his lodgings.

  The room where he lodged was up a creaking wooden staircase. The door had a bolt, and he wondered whether to add a second one. But he decided there was no point. A couple of determined men could break it down anyway. There was a heavy oak chest, however. He could drag it over to the door. If he laid his mattress beside the chest, he’d be sure to wake up instantly as soon as anyone tried to break in.

  The window worried him. It was only ten feet above the street. But it was narrow and the shutters were stout. He might be able to defend it.

  As for a weapon, he did have a dagger. He wished he had a sword, but a student couldn’t walk around the streets with that. The dagger was long and made to be used in battle. It had belonged to his grandfather. He tested the blade. It was sharp. Even if several men battered down the door, he ought to be able to kill one of them, maybe two.

  He stayed indoors until evening, ate his food, set up his barricade and prepared for the dangerous night.

  But he couldn’t sleep. Each creak he heard made him start. Around midnight something outside, a rat probably, disturbed a little pile of faggots, one of which fell with a soft click on the cobbles. In a flash, Roland was up, waiting beside the window, dagger in hand, not daring to signal his presence by opening the shutters but straining every nerve to hear if anyone was in the street, or coming up the stairs. He stayed there almost half an hour before lying down again, still listening.

  And as he listened, thoughts chased through his head. Why had he gotten involved with Martine? If only he’d been chaste. If only he’d been a Temple Knight. And what should he do? Could he return home? How would he explain it to his father? His family would be furious. He was supposed to be helping them and he’d let them all down. He dreaded the thought of facing them almost as much as he dreaded mutilation.