The guard’s red face appeared through the barred window, eyes squinting into the darkness, the clink of his keys echoing. François held his breath. The door opened abruptly, and the beam of a torch blinded him. He immediately shrank back against the oozing wall, but the guard remained motionless in the doorway, his back stooped, his whip hanging limply from his belt. Two liveried footmen entered the dungeon and set up a little table with cabled feet. As one of them set about sweeping away the straw and the excrement with a disgusted air on his face, the other brought in two padded chairs and a large embroidered tablecloth. With affected gestures, he placed two brass candlesticks, a crystal carafe, a stoneware pitcher, baskets of biscuits and fruit, porcelain saucers and plates, and some neatly arranged silverware on the table. Neither of the two footmen deigned to cast so much as a glance at the prisoner, who followed their movements with alarm. Their work over, they withdrew without a word. The prison was again shrouded in the silence of the night. Even the rats hiding in the cracks of the wall were noiseless.
A figure draped in a white linen alb suddenly appeared in the doorway, holding a boxwood rosary in one hand and in the other a lantern whose rays illumined a scarlet cross sewed on his chest.
“Guillaume Chartier, Bishop of Paris,” said the visitor, and ordered the guard to free François from his chains.
The bishop sat down and poured drinks. Seeming in no way repelled by the filth and the stench, he civilly invited his guest to join him. François got laboriously to his feet, pulled his shirt down to conceal his wounds, clumsily arranged his hair, threw back his shoulders, and even managed a slight smile. The bishop handed him a chicken thigh. François seized it and tore it to pieces with his teeth, gnawing it to the bone, while Guillaume Chartier explained the purpose of his visit.
He articulated every word with the unflappable calm peculiar to men of the Church, his smooth voice floating like mild incense in the rank air of the cell. François found it hard to listen to the man’s words. The fumes of wine tickled his nostrils. Between big mouthfuls of meat and greedy gulps of Burgundy, he caught only the odd scrap. He would have to pay more attention, though, since Chartier, after insisting that he was here as an envoy of the king, was speaking of a way to escape the gallows.
As he reached for a wild boar cutlet, François knocked over a full sauceboat of truffle juice. Laughing stupidly at his own clumsiness, he looked at the dignitary out of the corner of his eye. It would have been easy to plunge a fork straight into his heart.
Guillaume Chartier had expected a warmer welcome, imagining an enthralled listener hanging on every syllable. Instead, he was faced with a horny-handed lout bent low over his bowl, greedily devouring his food. The task with which Louis XI had entrusted him demanded tact. The slightest blunder could well spark a terrible political crisis, even an armed conflict. Unfortunately, the prisoner he had before him was not known for his obedience. He was a rebel. But it was on that very spirit of insubordination that the Bishop of Paris was counting.
As François snatched a big portion of mountain cheese, Chartier took a book from beneath his cloak. It had a crude pigskin binding, devoid of any decoration. The title was handwritten on the cover in thick characters: ResPublica.
“The Holy See wants to ban this publication at all costs.”
Chartier noted with satisfaction that François had immediately stopped eating. The flickering light of the candles now gave an impression of complicity between the two men. It was not the gloom of the dungeon that suggested this intimacy but the invisible bond of a shared passion, a strong, intense passion that reminded the bishop why he was condescending to dine with a man under sentence of death: the passion for everything to do with books.
François sat up straight, wiped his hands, and took the book from the table, on which Chartier had placed it. He first stroked the cover like a blind man, feeling the texture, smoothing the edges, following the folds of the leather with his finger. When he opened it, his eyes lit up. He leafed through it cautiously. The lout he had been earlier had vanished as if by magic, giving way to a man with a confident bearing and expert gestures.
Forgetting the presence of his distinguished visitor, François carefully examined the quality of the paper and the ink. A Latin text, interspersed here and there with Greek words, filled the pages with densely-packed lines, almost entirely devoid of punctuation, the paragraphs separated only by narrow spaces. It was an ungainly, almost slapdash piece of work. This was not a copyist’s manuscript, full of languid strokes and rounded calligraphy, but a jumble of awkwardly aligned characters struck brutally into the paper. François had already seen a few volumes like this in university libraries. He found these machine-made books somewhat repellent in appearance.
The bishop coughed to rouse François from his contemplation. “This copy is being sold clandestinely. It was printed in Mayence by a man named Johann Fust.”
François put the book down on the table and picked up a green apple. He could hardly hear Chartier’s monotonous voice over the cracking sounds his jaws made as they crushed the pulp. The acidic juice of the fruit stung the abscesses caused by the prison’s strict diet. He spat everything out on the ground in disgust. Chartier was sorry to see that the lout had returned. François seemed now to be listening only with half an ear, and was looking frankly bored. The bishop reluctantly resumed his exposition, less and less convinced of the validity of his visit. But he could not return empty-handed. The king stubbornly considered François Villon the ideal candidate, in spite of the opposing views of his advisers.
The way Johann Fust managed his affairs greatly intrigued the court. This German printer had opened several workshops in small isolated towns in Bavaria, Flanders, and the north of Italy. He seemed to draw no material advantage from these branches. On the map, though, their distribution suggested a military deployment. What was their purpose? According to information obtained, Fust was losing money every day. In Mayence, he published Bibles and pious works to order, but elsewhere his traditional presses printed volumes of quite another kind: ancient Greek and Roman writings and recent treatises on medicine and astronomy that he alone seemed capable of acquiring, without anyone being able to discover their provenance. Who was supplying him? In the copy of The Republic that François had just held in his hands, Plato propounded how a nation should be ruled. This text confirmed Louis XI in his political ambitions. It also strengthened the status of the Church of France, which wished to free itself of the Papal yoke. Hence the opposition of Rome. Why did Fust persist in publishing this kind of work, at the risk of bringing the wrath of the Inquisition down on his head?
François bent over the book with an intent air, estimating that it was sufficiently heavy to knock the bishop out cold. He pointed ostentatiously at the damp walls of his dungeon, then at the feast. “Is there such a shortage of informers?”
“I am not asking you to inform on this printer, Master Villon, but to become friends with him.”
François smiled, reassured. It would have been somewhat ridiculous to hire him as an informer. Imprisoned and tortured more than once, he had never betrayed any of his accomplices. He had many vices and shortcomings, but informing was not one of them. Chartier refrained from insulting him in such a way, and magnanimously poured him a full glass of marc.
The King of France was trying to weaken the power of the Vatican in order to consolidate his own. As it happened, a growing industry had begun to undermine Papal supremacy. Unlike the copyist monks, printing was not subject to the Church. Cleverly used, it might confer a lot of power on those who were able to control it. It was therefore regrettable that there was as yet no printing press in France.
The bishop looked François straight in the eyes, trying to get his full attention. He was almost whispering. Bandits and booksellers used the same clandestine channels to circulate their merchandise without the knowledge of the censors and the men at arms. That was why it was to a member of the band of brigands known as the Coquillards, a man named Colin de Cayeux, that the mission to follow Johann Fust’s every move had been entrusted. He had been watching him for months. Fust had opened several printing works in lands neighboring the kingdom but still none here. Colin de Cayeux had recommended his good friend François Villon, a fellow Coquillard, as the man most likely to persuade the German printer to set up shop in Paris.
“In other words, monsignor, you need a scoundrel.”
“Yes, but one who is also a man of letters.”
François accepted the compliment with a nod. He handed the copy of the ResPublica back to Chartier, omitting to tell the bishop that he already knew the text quite well and understood its political significance just as much as Louis XI. In it, Plato described a nation ruled by a monarch whose authority, held on behalf of the “common good,” outshone that of the priests and the feudal lords.
François reflected for a moment. The ambitions of a young king eager to strengthen his rule were easy to understand. But what design was this Fust, a mere bookseller, pursuing?
The bishop started tapping the table with his fingertips, an exasperated expression on his face. The wicks of the candles floated in the melted wax. Their faint reflections danced on the crystal of the carafe. François raised his head, with a curl of the lips whose deliberate silliness was close to insolence.
“Tell Louis the Prudent that his loyal subject Villon, although otherwise engaged, will forego all other commitments with the sole intention of being agreeable to him.”
The tapping of the fingers stopped immediately. Chartier’s impatient expression gave way to a priestly smile. “Fust and his son-in-law will have a stall at the great fair in Lyons. Your friend Colin won’t let them out of his sight. As soon as your sentence has been officially commuted, you will join him there. My diocese will provide you with bait for this printer. Some more wine?”
François held out his glass. The drink, as it flowed, hummed a pleasant refrain. Exchanging knowing looks, the bishop and the prisoner clinked glasses.
Although already quite drunk, François refrained from leaping out of his chair and dancing a bourrée around the table. He lowered his eyes, feigning gratitude and humility, aware only of the embroidered tablecloth, the food getting cold on the plates, the bishop’s chest swelling the scarlet cross with each breath. He knew how much Guillaume Chartier hated him. And envied him. For of the two of them in this jail, it was François who was truly free, with no ties, and always had been.
Chartier put down his glass and abruptly took his leave. His alb floated for a moment in the doorway before vanishing into the gloom. It seemed to François that he must have been dreaming. Was he really going to cheat the gallows? Could he trust the word of a scheming churchman? He had to stay on his guard. But that copious meal had been worth making a pact with the devil himself for.
What remained of the stew swam at the bottom of the meat terrine, already lukewarm. The candles were gradually going out. François grabbed the opportunity to filch the bread knife and two silver spoons, which he hid beneath his rags. Still standing in the doorway, the jailer yawned. Outside, a lazy fog rose above the ramparts. The crenellations, freed of their veil of frost, stood out clearly. The first crows could be heard cawing on the roof of the keep. In the distance, bells pealed for matins.
François Villon had not yet written his last ballad.