Paris: The Novel (9 page)

The broad spaces of the Grève market on the Right Bank were always busy. Ships and barges carrying wines from Burgundy and grain from the eastern plains unloaded on the river bank. On the other side lay the old quarters of the weavers, with the glassmakers a block farther. Her uncle’s house lay on the rue du Temple that ran northward between them. Too many people in the market knew her. She didn’t want to start gossip. It was time to get rid of her aristocratic young companion.

“Good-bye, monsieur, and thank you,” she said politely.

“I’m studying tomorrow,” Roland remarked, “but the day after, I shall visit the Sainte-Chapelle at this hour. Perhaps,” he suggested pleasantly, “I shall see you there.”

“I doubt it, sir,” she said, and walked away.

But two days later, she’d gone there all the same.

It wasn’t long since the saintly King Louis had completed his sumptuous sanctuary for the holy relics. The upper chapel was reserved for the king himself, who had a private entrance from the royal palace next door. But lesser folk could worship in a humbler chapel below. And even this was beautiful. The cryptlike space shimmered by the light of countless candles. As Martine looked at the delicate columns of red and gold and observed how they branched out into the low, blue vaults, so richly spangled with golden fleurs-de-lys, she felt as if she had entered a magical orchard. By coming to meet Roland, she had already opened the way for an intimacy between them. In the glimmering candlelight, with the soft scent of incense in every nook and crevice, it seemed only natural that she should draw close to his side.

And in doing so and leaning, once or twice, close to his body, she noticed something else. Notwithstanding the incense, she could smell him: a faint, pleasant smell of the light sweat on his leather sandals, and something else—was it almonds perhaps, or nutmeg?—that came from his skin.

They had been there some minutes, quietly enjoying the beauty of the place, when a priest came past them, and to her surprise her young student had addressed him.

“I was wondering,
mon Père
, whether I might show this lady the chapel above.”

“The royal chapel is not open, young man,” the priest replied sharply. And that, she thought, was the end of it. But not at all.

“Forgive me,
mon Père
, my name is Roland de Cygne. My father is the lord de Cygne in the valley of the Loire. I am his second son and plan to take Holy Orders.”

The priest paused and looked at him carefully.

“I have heard of your family, monsieur,” he said quietly. “Please accompany me …” And minutes later, they were in the royal chapel. “We can stay only a moment,” the priest whispered.

The sunlight was coming in through the tall windows, filling the high, blue and gold spaces with celestial light. If the lower chapel had seemed like a magical wood, this was the hallway to heaven.

Her young student, who spoke so well and smelled so good, had the power to open the secret gardens of earthly delights and royal sanctuaries. That was the moment when she decided to try him as a lover. Besides, she’d never had an aristocrat before.

As she stared at him now, in the early morning light, he opened his eyes. They were tawny brown.

“It’s time to go,” she whispered.

“Not quite.”

“I mustn’t get caught.”

“Don’t make a sound, then.” He grinned.

“We’ll have to be quick,” she said, as she lay down beside him.

Afterward he told her that he must study the following night, but could come to her the night after that. She told him yes, then led him downstairs into the yard. Like most of the better merchant’s houses in Paris, her uncle’s house was tall. The front door gave directly onto the street, but behind the house there was a yard with a storehouse, above which she slept, and a gateway to the alley that ran along the back. Drawing the bolts to the gate softly back, she pushed him through, and quickly bolted the gate behind him. From the house, her uncle’s snores could still be heard.

As Roland de Cygne made his way along the alley, he felt pretty pleased with himself, and his conquest. Before this, he’d had only brief and fumbling encounters with farm girls and serving wenches, so Martine was a good start to what he hoped would be a fine career as a lover. Of course, she was only a young woman of the bourgeois, merchant class, but good practice. And he supposed that she in turn must be quite excited to have a boy of noble blood for a lover.

He thought he’d handled his first approach to her especially well. As for telling her that he was descended from the hero of the
Song of Roland
, that had been only a slight embroidery on the truth. As a child he’d asked why he was named Roland, and his father had explained: “When your
grandfather went on crusade, he had a wonderful horse called Roland, after the hero of the tale. That horse went with him all the way to the Holy Land and back, and he deserves to be remembered. It’s a good name, too. I’d have given it to your brother, but the eldest in our family is always called Jean. So I gave it to you.”

“I’m named after a horse?”

“One of the noblest warhorses ever to go on crusade. What more do you want?”

Roland had understood. But he didn’t think he was going to get many girls by telling them he was named after a horse.

He cut through an alley back into the rue du Temple. The sky was brightening over the gabled houses. The city gates were open by now, but there was hardly anyone about. The sound of the dawn chorus was all around, bringing as it always did a little thrill to his heart. He sniffed the air. As usual in the city streets, he could smell urine, dung and woodsmoke; but the delicious smell of baking bread also wafted past him, and the sweet scent of a honeysuckle bush from somewhere nearby.

Roland hadn’t wanted to go to Paris. But his father had insisted: “There’s nothing for you here, my son,” he’d said. “But I think you have more brains than your brother, and that in Paris you could do great things for the honor of your family. Why, you might even surpass your grandfather.” That would be a fine thing indeed.

Roland’s grandfather had been favored by history. After the mighty Charlemagne had died, and his empire crumbled back into provinces and tribal territories built on the ruins of ancient Rome, the kings of the Franks were often masters of little more than the Paris region, known as the Île-de-France, while huge domains, ruled by rich and powerful feudal families, encircled them: Provence and Aquitaine in the south; Celtic Brittany on the northern Atlantic coast; Champagne to the east; and below it, the tribal lands of Burgundy.

And with Charlemagne gone, the terrible Viking Norsemen had begun their raids. On one shameful occasion, Paris had bought them off and sent them to ravage Burgundy—the Burgundians had never forgiven the Parisians for that. Even when, finally, the Norsemen had settled down in Normandy, their rulers were still restless. And when William of Normandy had conquered England in 1066, his family’s wealth and power had become greater than that of the French king in Paris.

But worst of all—more greedy, ruthless and frankly vicious—were the
rulers of a smaller territory below Brittany, on the mouth of the River Loire: the counts of Anjou. Ambition had led the Plantagenets, as they were called, into marriage with the ruling families of Normandy and Aquitaine. Worse still, by outrageous dynastic luck they’d gotten their hands on the throne of England too.

“By your grandfather’s day,” Roland’s father had told him, “the Plantagenets had almost surrounded the Île-de-France and they were ready to squeeze.”

France had been saved by a remarkable man. King Philip Augustus of the Capet dynasty, the grandfather of the present king, had been brave and cunning. He’d gone on crusade with England’s Plantagenet king, Richard the Lionheart, but he never missed a chance to set one Plantagenet against another. And when the heroic Lionheart was succeeded by his unpopular brother John, the wily French monarch had soon managed to kick him out of Normandy and even Anjou. Indeed, after John’s own English barons rebelled against him, it had looked for a moment as if the French kings might get England as well.

And during all these years of strife, no one was more loyal to the French king than the lord de Cygne. He was only a poor knight. The warhorse Roland was his most valuable possession. But he had gone on crusade with Philip Augustus, and the king called him his friend. So although his small estate lay within Anjou, and the Plantagenets might take it away at any time, he stayed at the side of his king. And when Philip Augustus had triumphed, he was able to reward his modest friend with lands that more than doubled the family’s wealth.

But the de Cygnes had not prospered since then. Roland’s father had sold some of his lands. Perhaps his brother could marry an heiress. That would be good. But there was something else that Roland could do for his family. He could rise in the Church.

The universal Church was many things: a source of comfort and inspiration, of scholarship and dreams. For the crusading family of de Cygne, it now offered another life-giving support. There was money in the Church—a lot of it.

Those who rose in the Church enjoyed the revenues of its vast estates. A bishop was a powerful man, and lived like a prince. Great churchmen could provide money for their families, and help them in every way. The vow of celibacy didn’t appeal to Roland. But fortunately, despite their vows, many a bishop had left illegitimate children. The Church provided
the educated class, and the great administrators of the crown. For a clever fellow, the Church was a way to fortune.

Roland was ready to do it. He wanted to be a success. Yet he still had one dream, a crusader’s dream, that he supposed could never be realized.

He looked up the street. A quarter mile away, between the narrow canyon of wood-beamed, gabled houses, he could see one of the gates in the city wall. Philip Augustus had built that mighty stone wall, enclosing both banks of the Seine in a huge oval. The gate was open. His way led in the opposite direction, but he couldn’t resist it. He walked toward the open gate.

As he passed through the gateway, the road continued straight ahead. On his left behind some orchards, he could see the Priory of Saint Martin in the Fields. There were a number of walled sanctuaries both inside and outside the city gates, containing important monasteries and convents. But the great enclave that had drawn him lay a short way ahead on his right. It was built like a fortress. Two castle towers rose fearsomely within. Its mighty doorways were barred, and bolted. Roland stood in the road and stared.

This was the Temple. A country in itself.

It was the Crusades that had created the Knights Templar. They began as security guards, bringing bullion safely across dangerous territories to the armies that needed it. Soon they were the guardians of huge deposits in many lands. From there, it was only a step to being bankers. As a religious order, they paid no taxes. By the reign of Philip Augustus, the Templars were one of the richest and most powerful organizations in Christendom. They answered only to the pope himself, and to God. And within the mighty Templars was a cadre of the most awesome warriors in the world: the Temple Knights.

The noble Knights of the Temple never surrendered. They were never ransomed. They fought, always, to the death they did not fear. To beat them, you had to kill them all.

To join them, you had to undergo an initiation so secret that no detail had ever leaked out. But once accepted, you were one of the innermost, sacred circle of the world of the crusades.

Roland had always dreamed of being a Temple Knight since he was a little boy. It was the only way he could imagine of equaling his crusading grandfather. He’d still dreamed of it before he came to Paris. But his father wouldn’t hear of it, for a good and simple reason.

Templars had no money. When the Temple Knights took their vows of poverty, they meant it. The order was rich beyond imagining; but its great men were poor. No use to the family of Roland de Cygne.

So now, as the spring morning light fell on the Temple towers, Roland gazed a little while and then turned away, back into the city. If the Temple had been his boyhood dream, he had to confess that life in the streets of Paris wasn’t so bad. He could enjoy Martine, for instance.