Charles jumped aside as a string of mules trotted past, their exasperated driver shaking his head and cracking his whip. Another of the many dangers of religion, Charles thought wryly, and moved into the shade of the ancient bridge’s fortified gate for a quick look at the river. The day was already hot, though a narrow ruffle of pearly clouds lined the horizon. Below him, huge barges mounded with goods floated west-downstream-like mammoth turtles. A few boatmen sent their small craft darting among the behemoths as they ferried passengers across the water. Most boats were loaded with goods, like the small barge piled with casks and guided by a huge sweep tiller just passing under the bridge. A flat-bottomed boat full of unhappily bleating sheep was being tied up at the bank below the quay. Other pedestrians stopped to watch as the gilded and carved prow of a noble’s open boat came in sight, rowed upriver by thirteen pairs of oars and full of richly dressed men and women lounging on cushions, idly watching Paris pass by. Amid all the waterside busyness, an occasional fisherman sat motionless beside his lines. Charles turned to look upriver, where the towers of Notre Dame soared at the end of the Ile de la Cite. Beyond the cathedral, gleaming mansions lined the newish island called St.-Louis. Real estate speculators had made it, Charles had been told, by linking together the little Ile Notre-Dame and another island where people used to pasture cows.
With difficulty, he pulled himself away from the river’s panoply and hurried through the Petit Pont’s massive gate onto the short bridge road. Houses, mostly stone, a few still plaster and timber, crowded close on both sides. A shout of “Gardez l’eau!” sent him to the other side of the roadway as a girl emptied a chamber pot from an upper window.
“Oh, la! Pardon, mon pere!” she shouted, laughing without the least sign of regret.
“You should get a penance for that,” he returned, laughing, too. “Chuck it out the back, mademoiselle, into the river!”
“Come up and give me a penance, then!”
She leaned her round arms on the windowsill and smiled down at him, as people in the street yelled ribald encouragement. Fighting an unclerical grin, Charles kept walking. A shop sign brought him to a halt. The black sign showed a white skeleton Death being ground under a red apothecary’s pestle. Not so long ago, apothecaries had sold sugar. If by some chance this shop still did, he could be done with his errand now, with that much more time for his other business. He ducked through the low doorway and stood blinking in shadow.
“Bonjour, mon pere.”
At first Charles couldn’t locate the treble voice. Then he saw the gleam of eyes peering at him just above the level of the counter.
“Bonjour,” he returned, not sure whether he was addressing a monsieur, a madame, or a child. The eyes vanished and a bulky shape clambered onto a tall stool, settled itself, and became recognizable as a tiny old man. He crossed his short arms and legs, tilted his big head to one side, and waited resignedly for Charles to finish realizing that he was a dwarf.
“Now that we’ve got that over,” he said briskly, “what can I do for you, my fine young cleric?”
“I wondered if, by chance, you have sugar, monsieur. Very white sugar.”
“If your grandfather had come in asking that, or your father, even, the answer would have been yes. But we don’t sell sugar now, you should know that.” The little man shrugged. “Though I hear your accent and maybe apothecaries still sell it in the south, people are backward down there. But sugar’s too common here for Parisians to think it cures anything. And it tastes too good. They could excuse that when it was rare as unicorn’s horn and nearly as expensive. But common as mud and lovely to eat, who spends silver for medicine like that? Pigeon dung, now, powdered crab’s eye, a little urine from a red-haired boy, some dried mouse liver, those are worth money and they’ll cure you, sure as saints have halos! Why? Because they’re disgusting. And who ever gets well without suffering?”
“Will they cure you?”
“People think they will and that’s probably just as good. Nothing much cures anything, young man. Oh, oh, yes, prayer, of course. We mustn’t forget prayer, must we?” His sarcasm was acid enough to strip the varnish from his counter.
“It sounds as though you don’t believe that cures much, either,” Charles said.
“One thing cures every ill.”
“What’s that?”
“Death.”
But the dwarf didn’t laugh and his eyes were as somber as a funeral Mass. He looked Charles over, enviously but without malice.
“Death will come even to beautiful young men like you eventually, I don’t need to sell you that.” He jerked his head to the north. “Sugar is across the bridge, at the Marche Neuf.”
Thanking him, Charles escaped. As he emerged into the street, a woman brushed past him toward the shop. Her gown and head scarf were unrelieved black, but a surprising froth of rose-colored petticoat swirled under her skirt as she stepped over the apothecary’s high threshold. Charles heard the dwarf’s voice rise warmly in welcome.
Charles turned away quickly. He didn’t need anything more to tell his confessor. He covered the short distance to the Ile de la Cite, turned right onto rue Neuve Notre Dame, realized when he ended up in front of the cathedral that he should have turned left, and retraced his steps. The Ile was the oldest part of Paris, settled even before the Romans came, and the so-called Marche Neuf, the New Market, was old, too, though not that old. This morning it was happy and lucrative chaos, as sellers called their wares, buyers bargained, and sweating jugglers and tumblers vied for whatever coins they could wring from the crowd-deniers, even a few sous if they were lucky, or nearly worthless old copper liards if they weren’t. Dogs barked, chickens squawked, and the barefoot children who weren’t gathered in front of a marionette show chased each other among the market stalls. The savory smell of roasted meat set Charles’s stomach rumbling. Then the deep strong scent of coffee caught him by the nose. He’d tasted coffee and liked it. The Dutch, of course, were mad about it, and had more or less cornered what market there was for it. Paris had coffeehouses, but Charles suspected it was just one more passing craze.
His nose led him to a swarthy man in a purple turban and flowing scarlet robe, sitting cross-legged on a patterned rug. Beside him, coffee simmered in a brass pot on a little stove. Charles nodded politely, wondering how to address a Mahometan. The coffee seller cocked a bright brown eye at him, poured coffee into a pottery bowl, and held it out.
“Coffee of the best, mon pere, and cheap,” he said, revealing himself as Parisian to the bone. “Wakes up the brain, pours heat into the sinews, balances the fluids, practically writes your sermons for you!”
Charles reached recklessly under his cassock and fished money out of his purse. The “Mahometan” whipped the coins from his palm and handed him the bowl. Charles sipped, half repelled by the bitterness, half intoxicated by the smell. And oddly pleased by the buzzing feeling that grew in his head as he drank. Before he knew it, the bowl was empty. Regretfully, he gave it back, refused a refill, and continued on in search of sugar. The buzzing feeling grew as he walked along the aisle between the stalls. Colors seemed twice as bright and he felt like he could walk to Turkey for a coffee tree and be back before dinner.
A splash of glowing red on a grocer’s stall stopped him in front of a basket of tomatoes. Tomatoes were common at home, but less so here, it seemed. None had appeared so far on the college table. Charles found himself smiling as he drank in their glowing color, remembering that some people still shunned them as the fruit Eve had given Adam, and what Pernelle had had to say about that. “Well, he didn’t have to eat it, did he?” she would say, her black eyes snapping. “But, of course, women are always blamed when things go wrong for a man.”
“Oh, look, let’s get some,” the same rich alto voice went on. Charles froze. Could coffee make him hear voices that weren’t there?
“Never, child!” an older voice hissed. “They’re love apples, they’re poisonous, everyone knows that. It’s a sin to sell them!”
Very slowly, Charles turned his head. The girl with Pernelle’s voice was pretty. But her hair was only brown, not a cloud of midnight. And when she felt Charles’s stare and turned to smile at him from under her little cherry ribboned parasol, he saw that her eyes were only brown instead of sparkling onyx.
“Bonjour, mon pere,” she said demurely, dimpling at his admiration.
He sketched a hasty blessing on the air and moved away to gaze fixedly at a length of badly dyed tawny wool on the next stall. Laughing, the girl called a bold good-bye as her chaperone hurried her away. Blind to the wool’s garish color and deaf to the seller’s praise for its quality, Charles was seized with longing for news of Pernelle, if she
