Paris: The Novel (11 page)

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 kitchen.

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.”