wine-criers from the taverns filled the air, promising the delights of such-and-such a wine available at such-and- such a price at such-and-such a tavern. One of these men, beating loudly on an earthenware jug of wine with a stick to bring attention to his wares, lifted the jug towards Thomas for a sniff of the deep red liquid, and I saw my squire blanch and gag — almost to the point of vomiting up his breakfast. He was suffering this morning after a night of revelry with the students — although the young clerks themselves seemed to be unaffected by their drinking bout, which had kept them up long past midnight.
We were within a bow-shot of the Seine by now, and we turned sharply right on to Ruga Sancti Germani, the long road that ran almost parallel with the river. After two hundred yards, riding past the bloody reek of the shambles, a wide open space where the city’s meat was slaughtered, its stalls bedecked with swinging carcasses and red-raw joints encased in creamy fat, we stopped at a crossroads where the other great north-south road of Paris, the Rue St-Denis, crossed the Sancti Germani. To my left, a short way down the Rue St-Denis, was the mighty Seine and ahead of it rose the strong tower of the Grand Chastelet — the fortification that guarded the northern part of the Grand-Pont, the gateway to the water-lapped, beating heart of Paris, the Ile de la Cite.
The Grand-Pont was where Father Jean had last set eyes on my father Henry, before he had set out for England. But it was no lonely spot for a tearful leave-taking between friends who would never meet again, as I had imagined it in Normandy. As we rode through the portcullis under the imposing bulk of the Chastelet tower and on to the bridge itself, I saw that the Grand-Pont was a hive of activity, even busier than the merchant-teeming Ville de Paris that we had just ridden through. About eighteen foot wide and a hundred yards long, the bridge was lined with narrow, shallow houses on each side; a few, a very few had the look of dwelling places, most were given over to the changeurs, the men who made their living by exchanging foreign coins into Parisian silver pennies. I stopped my horse and, digging a handful of the Tourangeaux silver out of my money belt, perhaps half a mark, I changed it into deniers parisis — frowning at the fee that the Frenchman demanded for this slight but essential service.
There was a constant stream of traffic crossing the bridge; a few men like us on horseback, but many others afoot — traders leading pack animals, one fellow herding a flock of unruly sheep northwards towards the slaughter yards we had recently passed, dozens of clerics in their black robes, students or young priests, it was hard to tell. Packs of filthy street urchins dodged between our horses’ legs offering more services than the ear could comprehend — and some involving their sisters that it is better not to contemplate, if you wish one day for a reward in Heaven. Even with Thomas and Hanno between me and the crowds, and our student friends waiting patiently a few yards ahead, I was jostled by the throng of passers-by, buffeted and bustled; the noise of a hundred throats dinning in my ears. I had a strong sensation of being in a strange, disorientating world — an unreal place, almost like a dream battlefield. It was not a pleasant feeling. Not for the first time I longed for the broad open dales of Yorkshire or the clean woodland of Westbury. Then my eye alighted on a knight, or rather on the departing back of a knight. He was at the north end of the bridge, about fifty yards away, pushing his horse through the throng, preparing to ride under the arch below the Grand Chastelet and out of sight. He was in full mail covered by a white surcoat, and he had his shield strapped to his back, a normal way to carry it when the prospect of battle was remote. But it was a shield I knew: a blue cross on a white field with a black border.
It was the device of the knights who had tried to kill me at Freteval. And the sight of an enemy brought me back into the real world like a dash of icy water in the face.
Chapter Twelve
I shouted ‘Hoy!’ and pointed at the back of the knight, just as he was passing under the Chastelet portcullis and away north into the Ville de Paris. Hanno followed the direction of my arm and nodded to himself.
‘Shall I follow him?’ he asked me, pulling his palfrey with difficulty around to face the direction we had come from.
The press of the populace around us was too thick and the knight of the blue cross had already disappeared from sight into the maze of streets in the Right Bank; knowing it was useless, I shook my head.
‘It is well that we know that these fellows are in Paris, too,’ I said to my Bavarian friend. ‘We are forewarned. And one day, Hanno, we’ll have a reckoning with them.’
Matthew the student called over to ask what we were so excited about: but I had not yet told them of my quest in Paris, and for some reason I did not wish to speak of it then. So I merely said that I had admired the knight’s helmet and wished to possess one similar myself. Then we all moved off the bridge and entered the Ile de la Cite — the pulsing heart, the very core of Paris.
Paris had two masters in those days, each almost the other’s equal in pomp and power: the temporal lord, Philip Augustus, the King, and his spiritual counterpart, Bishop Maurice de Sully. And just as the city of Paris was shared between these two puissant lords, so too was the Ile de la Cite. The western part of the island was the preserve of the King and his court: a vast palace for Philip himself, apartments, private chapels and grand halls for his family and servants; the eastern half of the island belonged to Bishop de Sully, and was dominated by the cathedral of Notre-Dame — only as yet half completed — but it also contained the episcopal palace, where Bishop de Sully and his people lived and worked, and a hospital, or Hotel-Dieu as it was called, as well as innumerable smaller churches, and a never-ending complex of cloisters that housed the throngs of clergy belonging to the cathedral. It was Notre-Dame, of course, that I was most eager to see: this great godly edifice was the Bishop’s life’s work. It was also the place where my father had made his music, and perhaps been briefly happy before his descent into peasanthood, poverty and ignominious death.
As we came off the Grand-Pont and on to the island, the royal palace, with its high tower and fortified walls was directly to my right, but we turned almost immediately left into the Rue de la Draperie — a bustling street filled with sellers of all kinds of cloth, from shining samite in peacock colours to drab fustian, from soft oriental silks to rough workman’s canvas. The mason’s-yard chinking once again echoed through the streets, above the animal hum of thronging humanity conversing, disputing, buying and selling. The drapers cried: ‘What do you lack; what do you lack, mistress?’ to every goodwife who hurried past their shopfront. Porters, struggling under the weight of vast bundles of coloured cloth tied to their backs, forced their way through the press, shouting for passage, their language sharp when their way was blocked, their elbows even sharper.
Up ahead, I could already catch brief glimpses of the high slanting roof of the choir of Notre-Dame above even the tallest houses. We turned right and rode on for a hundred yards through a slightly less populated street that had once been the Jewish quarter, Matthew told us, until Philip had expelled the Jews fourteen years previously and confiscated their wealth. The street was now the preserve of the furriers, and rich pelts of sable, mink and fox — and skins of cat and squirrel, too — hung from the stalls we passed. Then we turned right again and came into a broad space, entirely cleared of shops and houses, and I checked my courser and stared, agog at what lay before me.
There were huge piles of creamy limestone blocks, both dressed and rough hewn; groups of men clustered around the great stones, sometimes drawing on them with lead, carefully, precisely, sometimes a lone man chinking away delicately with his chisel or a muscular pair laboriously sawing the larger blocks into smaller ones. Dust puffed and plumed in the air, occupying it in dense clouds along with workmen’s cries, the shouts of the overseers and the harsh creak of a giant windlass as a finished block was winched ponderously via a network of pulleys and ropes towards the sky. Rough, very dirty workmen bustled hither and yon, some burdened with heavy bags of sand and rare earths on their shoulders, bundles of wood, or long, well-cared-for cutting tools. A scaffolding of logs and tree branches, lashed together with rawhide, crawled up the half-finished north wall of the nave like a sprawl of brown ivy or the veins on an old man’s hand.
It was noisy, filthy, chaotic, and yet breath-stealing — the exquisite beauty of the finished part of the cathedral, the choir at the eastern end with its huge columns, standing like stone trees, their branches curving out impossibly high to meet and support the vaulting roof; the round apse, dim and cool beyond the choir, lit only by the slim candles of pilgrims; the transepts, which gave the building the holy shape of the cross, had their spreading masonry worked and carved in wonderful designs; the vast windows along each side of the church, filled with coloured glass and glowing like jewels in the shafts of summer sunlight; even the half-built nave before me so majestic and elegant, gigantic and yet delicate — its buttresses outside the walls sprawling like massive spiders’ legs supporting the tall thin body of the cathedral itself… The sight of it all, the bustle and the ethereal beauty, the squalor of the building yard and the soaring wonder of Notre-Dame, made my head spin. I felt tiny in comparison to
