Imaginary LIves (7 page)

The Bird continued his patient work, assembling circles, dividing angles, examining all creatures under all their aspects. From his friend Giovanni Manetti, the mathematician, he learned of the problems of Euclid, then shut himself up to cover panels and parchments with points and curves. Aided by Filippo Brunelleschi, he perpetually employed himself at the study of architecture, but he had no intention to build. He wanted only to know the directions of lines from foundation to cornice, the convergences of parallels together with their intersections, the manner in which vaulting turns upon its keys and the perspective of ceiling beams as they appear to unite at the ends of long rooms. He drew all beasts, all their movements and all the gestures of men, reducing these things to simple lines.

Then like an alchemist who mixes ores and metals in his furnace, watching their fusion in hope of finding the secret of gold, Uccello would throw all his forms into a crucible, mix them, mingle them and melt them, striving to transmute them into one ideal form containing all. That was why Paolo Uccello lived like an alchemist at the back of his little house. He believed he might find the knowledge to merge all lines into a single aspect; he wanted to see the universe as it should be reflected in the eye of God, all figures springing from one complex centre. Near him lived Ghiberti, della Robbia, Brunelleschi and Donatello, each one proud and a master of his art. They railed at poor Uccello for his folly of perspectives, with his house full of cobwebs empty of provisions. But Uccello was prouder than they. At each new combination of lines he imagined he had discovered the way. It was not imitation he sought, but the sovereign power to create all things, and his strange drawings of pleated hats were to him more revealing than magnificent marble figures by the great Donatello.

That was how The Bird lived: like a hermit, with his musing head wrapped in his cape, noting neither what he ate nor what he drank.

One day along a meadow, near a ring of old stones deep in the grass, he saw a laughing girl with a garland on her head. She wore a thin dress held to her hips by a pale ribbon and her movements were supple as the reeds she gathered. Her name was Selvaggia. She smiled at Uccello. Noting the flexion of her smile when she looked at him, he saw the little lines of her lashes, the patterned circles of the iris, the curve of her lids and all the minute interlacements of her hair. Considering the garland across her forehead, he described it to himself in a multitude of geometric postures, but Selvaggia knew nothing of all that, for she was only thirteen.

She took Uccello by the hand and he loved her. She was the daughter of a Florentine dyer, her mother was dead and another woman had come to her father’s house and had beaten her. Uccello took her home with him. Selvaggia used to kneel all day by the wall whereon Uccello traced his universal forms.

She never understood why he preferred to regard those straight and arched lines instead of the tender face she raised to him. At night, when Manetti or Brunelleschi came to work with Uccello, she would sleep at the foot of the scaffolding, in the circle of shadow beyond the lamplight. In the morning she arose before him, rejoicing because she was surrounded by painted birds and coloured beasts.

Uccello drew her lips, her eyes, her hair, her hands; he recorded all the attitudes of her body but he never made her portrait as did other painters when they loved a woman. For The Bird had no pleasure imitating individuals. He never dwelt in the one place – he tried to soar over all places in his flight.

So Selvaggia’s forms were tossed into his crucible along with the movements of beasts, the lines of plants and stones, rays of light, billowings of clouds above the earth and the rippling of sea waves.

Without thought for the girl, he lived in eternal meditation upon his crucible of forms.

There came a time when nothing remained to eat in Uccello’s house. Selvaggia did not speak of this to Donatello or the others; she kept her silence and died. Uccello drew the stiffening lines of her body, the union of her thin little hands, her closed eyes. He no more realized she was dead than he had ever realized she was alive. But he threw these new forms among all the others he had gathered.

The Bird grew old. His pictures were no longer understood by men, who recognized in them neither earth nor plant nor animal, seeing only a confusion of curves. For many years he had been working on his supreme masterpiece which he hid from all eyes. It was to embrace all his research and all the images he had ever conceived. The subject was Saint Thomas, incredulous, tempting the wrath of Christ. Uccello completed this work when he was eighty. Calling Donatello to his house he uncovered it piously before him and Donatello said: “Oh, Paolo, cover your picture!” Though The Bird questioned him, the great sculptor would say no more, then Uccello knew he had accomplished a miracle. But Donatello had seen only a mass of lines.

A few years later they found Paolo Uccello dead in his bed, worn out with age. His face was covered with wrinkles, his eyes fixed on some mysterious revelation. Tight in his rigid hand he clutched a little parchment disc on which a network of lines ran from the centre to the circumference and returned from the circumference to the centre.

NICOLAS LOYSELEUR

Judge

Born on Ascension Day, he was dedicated to the Virgin, whose aid he invoked at all times during his life until he could not hear her name without his eyes filling with tears. He was first schooled by a lean man in a little loft on the rue Saint Jacques, where, after learning his psalms, donats and penitences with three other children, he laboriously acquired the logic of Okam. He soon became bachelor and master of the arts, for the venerable instructors found his gentle nature charmingly unctuous, as sweet words of adoration slipped easily from his fat lips. No sooner had he obtained his
baccalaureate
than the Church had its eye on him.

He served first in the diocese of the Bishop of Beauvais who recognized his talent, using it to inform the English before Chartres how certain French captains were deploying.

When he was about thirty-five years old they made him a canon of the Cathedral of Rouen, where he struck up a friendship with another canon and chorister, Jean Bruillot, with whom he psalmed fine litanies in honor of Mary.

Now and again he saw fit to remonstrate with Nicole Coppequesne, one of the monks of his chapel, taking that brother gently to task for his unseemly devotion to Saint Anastasia. Transported at the thought of a clever girl so beguiling a Roman magistrate, Nicole Coppequesne had a habit of carrying his ecstasies to the kitchen, flinging himself upon the pots and pans until his ardent embraces left him black in the face and smudgy as a demon. But Nicolas Loyseleur showed Nicole Coppequesne how much brighter was the power and the glory of Mary when she chose to resuscitate a drowned friar – a lewd friar surely, whose only salvation lay in his reverence to the Virgin. One night as Nicole Coppequesne left his cell bent on celebrating one of his odious kitchen orgies, his course led him past the altar of the Blessed Lady, where he paused perforce in pious genuflection. And that night his lubricity was drowned in the river.

The evil spirits who threw him in did not return to rescue him, but when the monks hauled his body out of the water the following day he opened his eyes after a time, revived by the grace of Mary. “Ah, what a choice remedy is such devotion!” breathed canon Nicolas Loyseleur. “How venerable, Coppequesne, and how discreet. Surely from this day you will renounce your Anastasia!”

When the Bishop of Beauvais opened the trial against Jeanne la Lorraine at Rouen, the graceful persuasiveness of Nicolas Loyseleur was not forgotten. Dressed as a layman, his shaven pate covered by a hood, Nicolas entered the small circular cell under the staircase where the prisoner was confined.

“Jeannette,” he began, drawing back well into the shadows, “Sainte Katherine has sent me to you, Jeannette.”

“And you,” said Jeanne, “in God’s name who are you?”

“I am a poor cobbler from Greu,” Nicolas replied. “Alas for our unhappy country! The ‘Godons’ have taken me, too, my girl.. I know you well, Jeanne. How many, many times have I seen you kneeling before the Holy Mother of God in the Church of Sainte Marie of Bermont! I have often sat there with you while our good curé, Guillaume Front, has said the mass. Do you remember Jean Moreau and Jean Barré of Neufchâteau, Jeanne? They were my comrades.”

Jeanne wept.

“Trust me, Jeannette,” urged Nicolas. “They made me a priest years ago. See? See my shaven head? Confess yourself to me, my child. Confess freely. Our gracious King Charles is my friend.”

“I will confess to you gladly,” said Jeanne.

A small hole had been secretly cut in the wall beforehand. Outside the cell Guillaume Manchon and Bois-Guillaume prepared to write down the confession as Nicolas Loyseleur whispered:

“Jeannette, tell me the truth. Tell me all... the English will not dare to harm you.” On the following day Jeanne was taken before her judges. Hidden by a thick serge curtain Nicolas Loyseleur sat with a notary in the hollow of a casement window. The notary was there to elaborate all charges against Jeanne in the record, and to leave her answers blank. When Nicolas appeared in the open court he made a little sign to prevent her from showing her surprise. Then he assisted the severe examination.

On the ninth of May, in the main tower of the Château, he declared that the need for torture was urgent.

On May the twelfth all the judges assembled with the Bishop of Beauvais to decide if Jeanne should be tortured. Guillaume Erart thought it unnecessary. Enough material had been obtained without that measure, he said. In Master Nicolas Loyseleur’s opinion it would be well to torture her for the good of her soul, but his advice was not followed.

On the twenty-fourth of May they led her to the cemetery of Saint-Ouen, where they tied her to a scaffold with her feet on a pile of faggots. While Guillaume Erart prayed, Nicolas Loyseleur was close beside her, whispering in her ear. Menaced by the fire, she grew deathly white as Nicolas caught her in his arms and with a quick glance at the judges, cried out: “She will confess.” When she passed him again at the low door of the prison he kissed her fingers.

“Please God, Jeannette,” he said, “this day has been well for you. Your soul has been saved, Jeanne. Only trust me and you shall be free. Resume the modest garments of your proper sex. Do as you are told else you are still in danger. Obey me, Jeanne, and you shall be saved. You are a good girl; there is no evil in you. But you are in the power of the Church. You must remember that.”

After dinner he visited her in her new prison, an apartment in the Château, reached by eight stairs. Nicolas sat down on the bed to which a heavy block was fastened by an iron chain.

“My Jeannette,” he began, “God and Our Lady have been merciful to you this day, for they have shown you the grace and mercy of our Holy Mother the Church. When the judges and holy men command you must obey humbly. You must give up your old ideas or the Church will abandon you forever. See, Jeanne here are honest garments of a modest girl. Be quick to shear those boyish locks.” Four days later Nicolas returned while Jeanne was asleep and stole the skirt and smock he had given her. When they told him she was again in man’s clothing he exclaimed: “Alas, I fear she’s sunk too deep in evil.” And to the Archbishop in his chapel he repeated the words of Doctor Gilles of Duremort: “We, her judges, have but to declare Jeanne d’Arc a heretic, abandoning her to secular justice; praying they shall deal with her leniently.” Before they led Jeanne to the stake Nicolas reached her side with Jean Toutmouille.

“Oh, Jeannette,” he pled, “hide the truth no longer, for now you must think only of your soul’s salvation. Trust me, my child! Here, before all eyes, you must go down on your knees in public confession. Public, Jeanne! Humble and public... for the good of your soul.”

Jeanne begged his help, fearing her courage there before the mob. He stayed to see her burn. It was then he manifested his devotion to the Virgin so visibly.

When Jeanne began to scream out in the name of Mary, Nicolas wept hot tears, strongly moved as he was at the very sound of Our Lady’s name. The English soldiers thought he cried out of pity for Jeanne, so they struck him and threatened him with their swords. If the Count of Warwick had not protected him they would have cut his throat then and there. As it was he mounted one of the Count’s horses and rode away.

For many long days he wandered over the roads of France, avoiding Normandy and the king’s men. Finally he reached Bale. Standing on a wooden bridge between tall pointed houses with blue and yellow turrets, roofed with arched, striated tiles, he was suddenly dazzled by the glare of the Rhine. He saw himself drowning like the lewd friar, Nicole Coppequesne, in the green water whirling before his eyes, and Mary’s name choked in his throat as he died with a sob.

KATHERINE THE LACEMAKER

A Girl of the Streets

She was born about the middle of the fifteenth century, in the rue de la Parcheminerie near the rue Saint Jacques, during a winter so cold that wolves ran over Paris on the snow. An old woman with a red nose under her hood took Katherine in and brought her up. At first she played in the doorways with Perrenette, Guillemette. Ysabeau and Jehanneton, who wore little petticoats and gathered icicles, chilling their small red fists in the icy gutters. They would watch the neighbourhood boys whistle at passers-by from the tables of the Saint-Merry tavern. Under open sheds they saw buckets of tripe, long fat sausages and big iron hooks from which the butchers hung quarters of meat near Saint Benoit le Betourne, where the scriveners lived. They heard the scratching of quills in little shops, and in the evening saw clerks snuff out their flickering candles. At Petit-Pont they mocked the sidewalk orators, then scampered away to hide among the angles of the rue des Trois Portes. After that they would sit together along the fountain’s curb and chatter until nightfall.