The Mirror of Simple Souls, page 20
But while the silence has remained, everything else has changed. What matters is not heard but seen: the rhythm of their movements. To begin with he stands far away from her, on the other side the room. She reads the last paragraphs she has translated. Her voice still has the softness he noticed that day when he saw her teaching, but it is more melodious now. Humbert listens to Ade’s words, letting them come to him, takes one step towards her, then another, Marguerite’s text a swell that carries him along. Ade lets him approach, no longer with any sign of tension. Last week she put a chair alongside hers so he could sit down, but he prefers to remain standing.
The young woman has progressed well since his previous visit, deciphering several pages and noting a passage that still seems obscure on her tablet. She reads aloud:
The Soul, says Love, is free, yet more free, yet finally supremely free, in the root, in all her branches, and all the fruits of her branches.
She stops, looks at the text, then carries on in a lower voice.
The Soul responds to no one if she does not wish to, if he is not of her lineage. For a gentleman would not deign to respond to a peasant, even if such a one would call him or attack him on a battlefield. And for this reason anyone who calls her will not find such a Soul. Her enemies no longer have any response from her.
Again she falls quiet. Humbert respects her silence, himself absorbed by what he has just heard. He has the feeling that his understanding of the text, which he already knew from having heard it read by Brother Jean and by Marguerite herself, is being renewed by Ade’s reading voice, her patient deciphering. Her apprehension of the work seems guided—is she conscious of this?—by an empathy that surpasses intelligence alone.
Like other passages heard on previous days, these last sentences set him wondering. Her enemies no longer receive any response from her. Humbert thinks of the silence with which Marguerite opposed the men who exhorted her to yield, to confess, or merely to speak. He remembers her face—closed mouth, gaze turned inward—when she stood tied to the foot of the stake, waiting to be burned alive. Was it really obstinacy that made her act this way, as he thought at the time? Or else a detachment from herself that was so profound, and the result of thoughts so subtle, that it was impossible for him to share in them.
There, instead of the feminine mysticism he once looked down on, which consumed meaning while pretending to appeal to the mind, he is now gradually discovering a structured and scholarly line of thought. Despite the concrete images that Marguerite uses, and phrases that are sometimes tinged with courtly literature—God, like a desired lover—she is indeed nourished by theological doctrine. The former student recognizes themes that echo great thinkers like Gregory the Great and Bernard de Clairvaux… The dialectic that the beguine Marguerite sets up between Love and Reason is reminiscent of the university debates in which he participated during his days at the Sorbonne. There is no muddled meaning, no pathological language linked to the sensual desires that are known to exist among women.
Marguerite’s book is a rigorous, soaring intellectual work.
How could he not have discerned this before now? How little he had trusted the accurate judgement of his master! What was it—jealousy?
*
Ade calls him. He moves closer again, leans over her shoulder, follows her finger as it moves over the page, feels his heart and his thoughts grow peaceful. Something in this woman Ade has the gift of calming him. Even his mother did not know how to control his wildly shifting emotions: anger, frustration, remorse. He was always agitated, never at peace. But when he is close to this young widow, so distant but not cold, the knot of tension he has felt inside him since the death of Brother Jean finally comes undone.
He ought not to have been so tardy in accomplishing his mission. But the death throes of his master had been so long and so frightful. After months of suffering, Humbert had reached the point of hoping that this man he had so loved would simply die. But in fact, was he even still the same man? In the last days, his eyes were those of a madman. His hands clung to the bar that had been fixed to the bed to prevent him from wandering as he sometimes did, stumbling, his arms stretched out before him, groping at the walls, as if to find there the sole support his lost mind could reach. Was it death that frightened the holy man? That made no sense. Or if it did, then all their lives were senseless.
At the very end, Jean opened his mouth like a nestling that holds out its beak to its mother. But he had already stopped eating. Humbert spoke to him, perhaps imagining that his voice would hold him back.
Then his heart stopped.
Autumn had come, rainy, so the routes were not propitious for travelling. Then winter, and the temptation to renounce his promise. But of course, that was inconceivable.
One day a notable guest travelling to Flanders had presented himself at the monastery. Hugo de Novocastro, one of the greatest masters of the Paris university, had been toiling for years on a treatise devoted to the end of days. The man brought with him the rumour of a strange prophecy that was circulating in the corridors and study rooms of the capital’s colleges. A mysterious Columbinus, he said, probably a Franciscan, had been announcing the imminent arrival of the Antichrist.
For years, mystics and scholars of all religious orders had been issuing warnings about the end of days, seeding a vague dread in the people’s minds, but Columbinus demonstrated the prospect of the apocalypse with frightening precision. In the vast echoing refectory, where the monks would discuss the news gathered from visitors and returning travellers, Humbert heard Hugo report those learned calculations. God, the prophet said, had planned the world around a single motif: the figure 7. The seven days of Creation, the seven planets, the seven spheres, the seven sacraments… And most important of all, the Seven Seals of the Book of the Apocalypse. Each seal corresponded to one of the Churches of Asia, to which Jesus in Saint John’s text addressed his admonishments: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea. And each church coincided with an age of the world, each with a duration of two hundred years starting from the Incarnation. Columbinus asserted that men were now living at the end of the sixth period, that of the Church of Philadelphia, and therefore exposed to the great dangers and evils that heralded the arrival of the Antichrist, who, accompanied by Gog and Magog, would come out of the abyss in 1316 to reign over the world.
Humbert had always felt a certain joy in playing at eschatological computations. More than once, following in the footsteps of Franciscans like Joachim de Flore and Pierre de Jean Olivi, he had plunged into endless speculations with Brother Jean, experimenting with numbers, which everybody knew were imbued with secret power. Those that are even, divisible and imperfect, which refer to the earthly world and to men; those that are odd, and especially the incorruptible primes, which express eternity—and even God himself. He explored all the combinations in which the union of the soul and the body, the mortal and the immortal is played out.
But this time Humbert had only one thought: he remembered the man condemned alongside Marguerite Porete on the place de Grève. The priest who called himself ‘The Angel of Philadelphia’, and claimed to defend her, but who in the moment of her execution abandoned her. A few days later, Humbert decided to return to Paris.
*
This Soul is supremely noble in adversity, Ade reads on.
Footsteps on the stairs outside. Humbert straightens up. Ade raises her head. Ysabel comes into the room. There is an air of vigorous exercise about her, and her face is rosy-cheeked from the outdoors. Her arrival dispels both Humbert’s memories and the sweetness of the moment.
The old beguine stays until nightfall. As the Franciscan is getting ready to leave, somebody knocks at the door downstairs. Ade’s servant goes to answer. All three of them hear a panicky voice: ‘Is Dame Ysabel here?’
The servant murmurs in protest, but the visitor pushes past her into the house. ‘Dame du Faut is asking for her. She must come right away. Juliotte has disappeared!’
6
For three whole days they search for the mute girl.
The morning of her disappearance, she left the shop while her companions were barely awake. Jeanne du Faut had given her permission to go to the shops at Les Halles in order to prepare a meal for the feast of Saint-Jacques. Juliotte seems to have a special devotion to the patron saint of pilgrims, though nobody knows why. But what does anyone really know about her, though she takes care of everyone?
When she was not back by Terce Jeanne began to worry. At Sext, Juliotte had still not returned. Everyone started to fear there had been an accident. The area around Les Halles market is clogged with carts and porters; barely a day goes by when a passer-by is not injured by a collapsing load or a beast of burden. First the girls from the Silk House, then the freelance spinners and embroiderers employed by Jeanne du Faut, went out two by two to look for her. First in the neighbouring streets, then further and further away.
The news spread quickly through the quarter. Artisans sent their apprentices and companions to lend help. Giacomo, alerted by the rumour, sent his servants. Marie Osanne herself went with a seller to the fish market where Juliotte used to go. But at Saint-Eustache, nobody had seen her. Nor had anyone at Les Halles, or on the wharves. When asked, the herring-sellers declared they had no memory of the mute girl. It’s so busy round here! In the evening, a boy reported that he’d seen a little beguine carrying some flowers to the church of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie. That could be her, thought Jeanne. Two lads accompanied the boy back to the church and searched through the building and the alleys close by, but with no success.
Night fell and the watchmen were alerted. Ysabel arrived, and Marie Osanne came back.
That night nobody slept.
*
They report the disappearance to the bailiffs the next day. But nothing happens. Or rather, everything happens just as Jeanne du Faut ought to have expected.
‘You let her go out alone?’ they ask. ‘A girl of that age?’
‘How was she dressed?’
‘What was her usual manner?’
‘Did she tend to provoke passers-by?’
The day comes to an end, and then another. Some of their neighbours continue their searches, others give up. Giacomo asks some aldermen who are in debt to his cousin to put some pressure on the provost to organize a search. The Italian merchant comes by each morning to ask for any news. The shop remains open. Jeanne stays in her room while Maheut receives customers, folds and unfolds pieces of cloth, dusts and tidies the shelves, mops the marks left by shoe soles on the parquet floor. Everything will be clean and orderly for Juliotte’s return.
On the third night, the heat that has been gathering over the city begins to shimmer. Then the storm finally bursts, with jagged blades of lightning and thunder like a galloping charger. On the morning of the fourth day, a Saturday, a woman comes to the shop, a headdress-maker from rue Beaubourg, asking for Jeanne. The mistress listens to her talk, grows pale, sits down, and sends for Marie Osanne.
Together they set out for Saint-Gervais, wearing heavy capes despite the heat. Under the elm tree in front of the church, where the corpses of the unknown are left, guarded by a bailiff, Jeanne immediately recognizes the body of Juliotte.
When Ysabel arrives at the Silk House just before Sext, having been summoned by Beatrice la Grande, she brings with her herbs for perfuming a room of death.
*
Juliotte lies on Jeanne du Faut’s bed. So small and skinny, her tiny breasts already falling back into her thin ribs, her hair thin. She was beaten, defiled in all sorts of ways, then thrown into the hole where the bailiff found her. At the bedside stands Jeanne, holding out a basin into which Ysabel dips the cloth with which she is washing the body.
Marie Osanne is present, too. And Ade. The young girls of the house will not be allowed in until Juliotte’s dignity has been restored. Maheut, despite her status as woman and mother, is being kept at a distance. Told to stay in the attic with her daughter. But she is not there.
Downstairs, the door of the shop has been left ajar for neighbours who come to offer their support and to share in the household’s mourning. The sound of their muffled voices rises through the room’s parquet floor. The shutters are closed and the heat is oppressive. The body is already giving off the stink of a rotting carcass.
*
Despite her attention to her task, Ysabel is the first to see her. The child has slipped silently into the room. Her eyes are glazed, as if she were sleepwalking; they are shining, but she is not crying. Ade notices her, too, and steps forward, arms outstretched. Ysabel stops her. Leonor goes up to the bed, takes Juliotte’s left hand in hers, loosens the rigid fingers, places them against her cheek, closes her eyes.
Down below, in the shop where she has taken refuge, far from the room where Juliotte will never sleep again, Maheut too has closed her eyes. At the back of the room, hidden from view, she rests her head against Giacomo’s chest. He has slipped his arms around her; she would like to weep but she cannot. She feels only her heart pounding in her ears.
7
The death of juliotte is like a marker on a path that stops you getting lost. A broken branch at the foot of a trunk, a few stones piled on top of each other, a rock that stands out because it looks like an animal’s head… If you lose your way, find yourself teetering on the edge of a precipice wondering how you got there, you turn back—and then you find the marker.
Later, when they tell the story, some will say that her murder was the first sign, the one that heralded the catastrophes to come. But they will be wrong, because of the narrowness of their view, or the tenderness of their heart.
Before Juliotte—a twig lying broken at the roadside—there had been so many other signs, so many other milestones… The pyres built for the Templars near the Saint-Antoine gate. The miserable cleric from the Sorbonne coming to preach mortification and retreat from the world in the Beguinage chapel. The king’s hunts. The expulsion of the Jews and the Lombards. The sky tinted red and saffron on the last day of January 1309. Maheut’s headdress ripped off by a stranger. Marguerite’s execution. But just as important were the bankruptcy of the royal treasury and the ruin of the feudal class, the devalued currency, the black coins—events of a different kind, but just as significant.
As one who pays careful attention to causality and chance, Ysabel knows this: however small our lives are, they are all part of a greater whole; the movements and the troubles of the soul depend on those of the world at large; violence does not end with its target, but rebounds onward like a pebble skipping over water, striking and striking again. Just as collective fears grow from individual acts of baseness, so great causes may be reflected in the most mundane struggles. Juliotte is dead and buried and the investigation yielded nothing. Was she chosen because she was a beguine, or simply because she was a female? It does not matter. Her fate is one with all that preceded it and all that will follow.
*
Jeanne du Faut’s living room seems too small for the big Franciscan. He remains standing as usual, his shoulders hunched.
‘What is happening?’ he asks.
Ysabel wishes he would sit down. She has a sore neck and it hurts her to look up at him when she talks.
‘Brother Humbert, I am sorry, but we can no longer receive you at the Beguinage.’
‘So I gathered, but for what reason?’
His tone is impatient. He must still be smarting, Ysabel thinks, from being turned away from Ade’s home and sent to the Silk House. But everything happened so fast! At least Guillaumette was able to give him a message.
‘The Dominican prior is expected at the Beguinage this afternoon.’
‘How does that concern me?’
‘I do not wish him to know of your frequent visits.’
‘Why not? Could you not present me to him as you did to Dame Armelle?’
‘The prior will be less understanding—or perhaps less naïve.’
The Franciscan frowns, and protests.
‘I do not understand why his visit should prevent me from coming back another day! We have almost finished. One or two more sessions would suffice.’
Humbert turns his eyes to the bench where Ade sits, listening intently.
‘We have almost finished, have we not?’ he insists.
‘We have, it is true,’ murmurs the young woman.
Why this obstinacy? wonders Ysabel. He says himself that their work is nearly complete. She allows a brief silence to grow and then continues as if she has not heard them.
‘The Jacobin is not coming today out of courtesy. He has asked to meet the mistress in order to give her new instructions. And his secretary must inspect our registers. They are tightening their grip on the Beguinage. Surely you would not wish to put Dame Ade in danger?’
The slender figure sitting near the window remains silent. Humbert turns his gaze away.
Just then, somebody knocks at the door. Ade rises. She has guessed who it is. Humbert sees a little girl come into the room. She curtsies, takes her godmother’s hand then the two of them go back to the bench.
‘This is Maheut’s daughter, Leonor,’ explains Ysabel.
The little girl is snuggling up to the copyist. With the light coming through the window at their backs, Humbert can barely see their faces, but it was enough for him to see the young woman bend down to the child a moment earlier. Now he knows the tenderness of her smile.
‘I am sorry if you felt insulted.’
Ysabel’s voice jerks the Franciscan from his thoughts:
‘No, doubtless you are right, my visits have become imprudent. The Dominican prior’s intervention serves only to confirm the rumours.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘According to a brother recently returned from Avignon, the pope is preparing to publish the decrees of Vienne against the beguines. The sovereign pontiff is unwell, with a sickness that gnaws at his intestines, but he seems determined to fight those who want to introduce the Free Spirit into the Church. The Dominicans are no doubt aware of his plans.’
