Holy Fools Read online

  Audiences loved me. Many believed LeMerle’s fiction: that I was of another race. There were rumors of witchcraft, and a few times we were forced to leave a town in haste. But those times were few; our fame spread, and at LeMerle’s orders we moved north again toward Paris.

  Two and a half years had passed since our flight from the city. Time enough, said the Blackbird, for our little contretemps to have been forgotten. Besides, he had no ambition to reenter Society; the king was getting married, and we were not alone in making for the celebrations. Every troupe in the country was doing the same: actors, jugglers, musicians, dancers. There was money to be made, said LeMerle, and with a little imagination, a little initiative, we could make a fortune.

  But by this time I knew him too well to believe the simple explanation. That look was back in his eyes—the look of dangerous enjoyment he wore when planning an outrageous venture—and I was wary from the first.

  “He’s hunting a tiger with a pointed stick,” Le Borgne was wont to say. “Finding it’s the easy part, but God help us all if he runs it to ground.”

  LeMerle, of course, denied any such intent. “No mischief, I promise you, my Harpy,” he said, but with so much suppressed laughter in his voice that I did not believe him. “What, are you afraid?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Good. This is no time to start suffering from nerves.”

  8

  JULY 13TH, 1610

  It was the height of l’Ailée’s career. We had money, fame; crowds adored us, and we were coming home. With the approach of the king’s wedding, Paris was in perpetual carnival; spirits were high; drinking deep, purses loose; and you could smell the hope and the money and, behind that, the fear. A wedding, like a coronation, is a time of uncertainty. Rules are suspended. New alliances are made and broken. For the most part, they mean little to us. We watch the big players on France’s stage, simply hoping that they will not crush us. A whim could do it; a king’s finger is heavy enough to wipe out an army. Even a bishop’s hand, cleverly wielded, may crush a man. But we at the Théâtre des Cieux did not consider these things. We could have read the signs if we had chosen to, but we were drunk on our success; LeMerle was hunting his tigers and I was perfecting a new—and increasingly dangerous—routine. Even Le Borgne was uncharacteristically cheery, and when we received word on entering Paris that His Majesty had expressed an interest in watching us perform, our elation knew no bounds.

  The days that followed passed in a blur. I’ve seen kings come and go, but I’ve always had a soft spot for King Henri. Perhaps because he cheered so heartily on that day; perhaps because his face was kind. This new Louis is different: this little boy. You can buy his portrait in any market, crowned with a sun halo and flanked by kneeling saints, but he makes me fearful with his wan face and heart-shaped mouth. What can such a little boy know of anything? How can he rule France? But all that was to come; when l’Ailée performed at the Palais-Royal, we had more security, more happiness than we had enjoyed since before the wars. This marriage—this alliance with the Médicis—proved it; we saw it as a sign that our luck had turned.

  It had—but not for the better. The night of our performance we celebrated with wine and meat and sweet pastries, and then Rico and Bazuel went to watch a wild-beast show near the Palais-Royal while the others got even more drunk and LeMerle went off on his own toward the river. Later that night, I heard him return, and when I passed his caravan I saw blood on the steps and I was afraid.

  I tapped at the door and, receiving no answer, went inside. LeMerle was sitting with his back to me on the floor, with his shirt wadded against his left side. I ran to him with a cry of dismay; there was blood all over him. More blood, in fact, than real hurt, as I discovered to my relief. A short, sharp blade—not unlike my own—had glanced off his ribs, leaving a shallow, messy gash about nine inches long. At first I assumed he had been attacked and robbed—a man in Paris by night needs more than luck to protect him—but he still had his purse, and besides, only a very inept footpad would have dealt him such a clumsy blow. As LeMerle refused to tell me what had happened, I could only conclude that this mischief was somehow of his own making and dismiss it as an isolated case of ill fortune.

  But there was more bad luck to come. The following night, one of our caravans was set on fire as we slept, and only chance saved the rest. As it was, Cateau got up for a piss and smelled smoke: we lost two horses, the bulk of our costumes, the caravan itself, of course, and one of our number: little Rico, who had got blind drunk during the evening and failed to awaken to our cries. His friend Bazuel tried to go in after him, though we could see it was hopeless from the start, but he was overcome by smoke before he even got close.

  It cost him his voice: when he recovered, he was unable to speak in anything above a whisper. Even after that, I think, his heart was broken. He drank like a sponge, picked fights with anything that moved, and performed so badly in his act that in the end, we had to leave him out altogether. When, some months later, he chose to leave us, no one was surprised. And anyway, as Le Borgne said, it wasn’t as if we had lost a rope-dancer. Dwarves could always be replaced.

  We left Paris furtively and in somber mood. The celebrations were far from over, but now LeMerle was eager for us to be gone. Rico’s death had affected him more than I had expected; he ate little: slept less: snapped at anyone who dared speak to him. It was the first time I had ever seen him truly angry. It was not for Rico, I soon realized—nor even for the damaged equipment—but for his own humiliation, the spoiling of our triumph. He had lost the game: and more than anything else, the Blackbird hated to lose.

  No one had noticed anything on the night of the burning. LeMerle, however, had his suspicions, though he would not speak of them. Instead, he sank into a dangerous silence, and not even the news that his old enemy, the Bishop of Evreux, had been waylaid by footpads a few days before was enough to brighten his spirits.

  After Paris, we made our way south. Bazuel left us in Anjou, but we gained two more people in the months that followed: Bécquot, a one-legged fiddle player, and his ten-year-old son, Philbert. The boy was a natural on the high rope, but he was too reckless; he took a bad fall later that year and was useless for months. All the same, LeMerle kept him with us through the following winter and, although the boy was never fit for the flying act again, fed him and found him useful work to do until he was finally able to place him with a group of Franciscans who, he said, would care for him. Bécquot was grateful, and I was surprised, for business had taken a bad turn and money was short. Le Borgne simply shrugged and muttered something about tigers. But, as I said, LeMerle could be sentimental about the oddest things.

  We moved on. We worked markets and fairs throughout Anjou and down into Gascony, sometimes helping with harvests as we had done in the early days, staying in one place over winter. The second winter, Demiselle died of a fever, leaving us with only two dancers—at thirty, Hermine was getting too old for the high rope, and it was painful to watch her. Ghislaine tried her best but never mastered the jumps. Once more, l’Ailée flew alone.

  Undaunted, LeMerle returned to playwriting. His farces had always been popular, but his plays became gradually more satirical as we journeyed across France. His favorite subject was the Church, and several times we were forced to pack up in haste as some zealous official took offense. The public, for the most part, enjoyed them. Evil bishops, lecherous friars, and religious hypocrites had always attracted appreciative audiences, and when there were also dwarves and a Winged Woman, the show never failed to bring in money.

  LeMerle played the clerical roles himself—he had somehow acquired a variety of religious garments and a heavy silver cross, which must have been valuable, but which he never tried to sell, even when times were poor. It was a gift, he said when I questioned him, from an old friend in Paris. But his eyes were hard as he said it, and his smile was all teeth. I did not pursue the matter, however; LeMerle could be sentimental about the strangest things, and
if he wanted a thing kept secret, then no amount of questioning would loosen his tongue. All the same, I wondered a little—especially when I was hungry and food was scarce. Then, after a while, I put it out of mind.

  Now began our drifting time. We traveled south in winter, north in summer, always following markets and fairs. We changed our colors in the more hostile regions, but for the most part we were still the Théâtre des Cieux, and l’Ailée danced the high rope, and people cheered and threw flowers. Even so I sensed that my heyday was coming to an end—one year a torn tendon kept me in agony for a whole summer—but we knew we could always fall back on LeMerle’s plays. They were more hazardous than the rope act, certainly; but they earned us good coin, especially in Huguenot country.

  Five more times we made the journey south; I learned to recognize the roads, the good places, the dangerous places. I took lovers where and when I chose, without hindrance from LeMerle. He still shared my bed when I wanted him to; but I had grown up a little, and my slavish adoration of him had turned to a more comfortable affection. I knew him now. I knew his rages, his triumphs, his joys. I knew him, and I accepted what he was.

  I knew, too, that there was much in him to hate, much to mistrust. Twice to my knowledge, he had murdered—once a drunkard who struggled too violently to retrieve a stolen purse, once a farmer who stoned us near Rouen—both deeds committed in stealth and darkness, only to be discovered long after we had gone.

  I asked him once how he reconciled such things with his conscience.

  “Conscience?” He raised an eyebrow. “You mean God, Judgment Day, and that kind of thing?”

  I shrugged. He knew that wasn’t quite what I meant but rarely passed over an opportunity to tease me over my heretical beliefs.

  LeMerle smiled. “Dear Juliette,” he said. “If God is really up there—and if we are to believe your Copernicus, that must be a very, very long way up—then I don’t trust his perspectives. To him, I’m a speck. Down here, from where I’m standing, things are different.”

  I didn’t understand, and I said so.

  “I mean that I’d rather be something more than a gambling chip in a game of unlimited stakes.”

  “Even so, to kill a man—”

  “People kill each other all the time. At least I’m honest about it. I don’t do it in God’s name.”

  Knowing him for good or ill—or so I thought—I could still love him, believing as I did that in spite of his sins, the essential heart of the man was good, was faithful to itself, a thieving blackbird singing a mocking song…But that was the man’s talent. He could make people see what they wanted to see, reflections of themselves as vain as shadows in a pond. I saw my foolish self in him, that was all. I was twenty-two, and I had not grown up half as much as I believed.

  Until Épinal.

  9

  JULY 14TH, 1610

  ÉPINAL

  It is a pleasant little town on the Moselle, in Lorraine. It was the first time we had come that way, concentrating as we did mostly on the coastal regions, and we arrived in a small village called Bruyère a few miles outside the town. A quiet place; half a dozen farms, a church, orchards of apple and pear trees half-eaten by mistletoe. If I felt anything unusual I cannot recall it now; maybe a sharp glance from a woman by the roadside, a sly forking of the fingers from a child at the crossroads. I read the cards, as I did at any new spot; but I drew only a harmless Fool, a Six of Staves, and a Deuce of Cups. If there was a warning there, I did not see it.

  It was August; parched summer dragging into a premature autumn turning dank and sweet with rot. Hailstorms a month earlier had crushed the ripe barley, and the fields lay spoiling in an alehouse stench. The sudden heat in the wake of the storms was overwhelming, and the people seemed dazed by the sun, blinking foolishly at our caravans as they passed. Nevertheless, we managed to negotiate a field for our camp, and that night we performed a short burlesque around our campfire, to the accompaniment of crickets and frogs.

  Our audience was sparse, however. Even the dwarves barely brought a smile to the mirthless faces made bloody in the firelight, and few seemed inclined to stay afterward. The only regular entertainments in that region were hangings and burnings, according to alehouse gossip: a sow had been hanged a few days earlier for eating her young, a pair of nuns in a nearby convent had set themselves on fire in imitation of Saint Christina Mirabilis, and there was always at least one person in the pillory, so the villagers of Bruyère, inured to strong entertainments, were unlikely to be much moved by the arrival of a troupe of players.

  At this LeMerle shrugged philosophically. There were good days and bad, he said, and these small villages were unused to culture. Épinal would be better.

  We arrived there on the morning of the Festival of the Virgin to find the town in carnival mood. We had expected as much; after the procession and the mass the populace would retire to the alehouses and the streets, where already the celebrations were under way. This was no time for one of LeMerle’s satires—Épinal had a reputation for piety—but there might be good takings for a rope-dancer and a troupe of jongleurs. I could already see a tabor player and a flautist beneath the portals of the church, plus a masked Fool with his wand and bells and, strangely out of place, the Plague Doctor, black long-nosed mask over whitened face, his dark cloak flapping. Other than that slight note of discord, things seemed much as normal. Perhaps there was another troupe in town, I told myself, with which we might have to share the takings. I know I thought no more about them. And yet I should have recognized the signs. The black Doctor in his crow’s garb. The sounds of excitement—almost of fear—as we passed. The look in a woman’s eye as I smiled at her from my caravan, the sly fork of the hand repeated over and over…

  LeMerle scented trouble from the first. I should have known—there was a reckless gleam in his eyes as he scanned the crowd, a broadness to his smile that should have checked me. It was our custom at times like this to send out the dwarves among the revelers, giving out sweetmeats and invitations to the performance, but this day he signaled for the dwarves to keep close, Le Borgne occasionally spitting fire from the tail of my caravan like a comet, Cateau calling out in his piping voice: “Players! See the players today! See the Winged Woman!”

  Today, however, I could see that the crowd’s attention lay elsewhere. The procession of the Holy Mother was about to begin, and there was already a great glut of people outside the church. People lined the street on either side, some carrying images and flowers, votives or flags. The bridge too was thronged with people of the river, awaiting the ceremony. There were vendors too: sellers of pasties and cooked meats and ale and fruit. The air was thick with the smells of candle smoke and sweat, roasting meat, dust and incense, leather and onions and refuse and horses. The noise was almost unendurable. Cripples and children stood near the front, but already there were too many people, and the crowd pressed against the sides of our caravans, some looking up curiously at the painted signs and bright pennants, others shouting at us for being in their way.

  I was already beginning to feel dazed; the cries of the vendors, the heat of the sun, the many stenches were too much for me, and I tried to turn back into some quieter street, but it was too late. Urged forward by the mass of worshipers, our caravans had reached the steps of the church almost at the same time the Virgin’s Day procession was due to leave. Unable to retreat or go forward I watched, curious, as the great platform carrying the Holy Mother emerged from the main door of the church and into the light.

  There must have been fifty people underneath and another fifty along the sides, shoulders straining against the long poles that supported it. It was heavy and swayed as it came through the doorway; and at every slow step there came a sigh from the hooded bearers, as if the burden were almost too much to carry. The Holy Mother stood at the top of the structure on a mound of blue and white flowers, her embroidered robe gleaming in the sunlight, her hands smeared with oil and honey. A priest with a censer walked before her; a dozen
monks with candlesticks came behind, singing the Ave to the wailing of an hautbois.

  I had little time to follow the music, however. As soon as the procession appeared, there was a moan from the people, and we were jostled suddenly, violently, as the worshipers surged forward. “Miséricorde!” came the cry from a thousand throats, and the stench of oil and flesh and grime was overwhelming, mingling with the smoke from the silver censer, a scent of clove and holy dust. “Pity! Pity for our sins!”

  I stood upon the axle of my caravan and peered across the heads of the crowd. I was beginning to feel uneasy, for although I had seen religious frenzy before, this seemed unusually ferocious, the shrill note of zeal sharpened on something shriller, closer to the bone. Not for the first time, and with an almost unconscious cupping of the new roundness at my belly, I wondered whether it was not time to leave the life we were leading before it soured completely. I was in my twenty-third year. I was no longer young.

  The black Doctor flapped his cloak, keeping a blister of space between himself and the crowd, a walking emptiness, and I noticed that the cries came louder at his passage and that some fell to their knees in his wake.

  “Miséricorde! Pity for our sins!” We were too close to the procession to hope for a retreat, and I steered my horse with care, keeping him dancing gingerly on the spot against the push of people, which threatened to overturn us. The Holy Mother passed slowly, lurching like a laden barge through the crowd. I saw that many of the people carrying the platform went barefoot, like penitents, although this was not usual on the Virgin’s Day. The monks were hooded like the bearers, but I noticed that one had pushed back his hood a little, and his face was red and flushed with drunkenness or exhaustion.

  We stood our ground. The platform swayed as it passed us, and for a moment, standing on my axle, I was eye to eye with the Virgin, close enough for me to see the dust of years gleaming in the intricacies of her golden crown, the flaking of paint across her pink cheek. There was a spider in the hollow of one blue eye, and as I watched, it began to move slowly down her face. No one else saw it. Then she passed by.