The Brethren, Page 35

  “Certainly,” I said, though somewhat troubled that my father had used the word “honour” for such an occasion.

  “For my part,” Samson sighed, “I’m glad this poor rogue won’t be tortured the way he described to us.”

  *

  The cache revealed and our booty stashed in a safe place, my father called the two monks and requested their offices. While they confessed Forcalquier, he stood apart out of earshot but positioned so that he could observe the butcher-baron’s face. When they had finished, my father approached the elder of the two monks: “My brother, this man appears to be happy, as if at the minute of his death he were going to be borne by angels right up to Paradise and sit on the right hand of Christ.”

  “And of the Holy Virgin,” said the monk, not without a touch of malice, “to whom he dedicated a fervent cult during his lifetime.”

  “Yes, I know. But whence comes his certainty? If it is by works that man gains salvation, as your Church teaches, by what works has Forcalquier been judged if not by his murders?”

  This white-haired, bright-eyed monk studied my father: “’Tis true. Forcalquier is poor in works, but he’s rich in faith. And as you know, My Lord, grace works in mysterious and impenetrable ways.”

  “So I believe,” replied my father.

  And as he said nothing further, the monk added: “Is he going to die? He looks ruddy enough despite his wounds.”

  My father shrugged his shoulders. “Would it not be an act of charity to expedite these beggars to their deaths rather than save them for torture, the gallows and dismemberment?”

  “Indeed so,” said the monk glancing quickly at my father, “if charity is really your purpose.”

  “Charity is one of my purposes,” answered my father with an overly literal truthfulness that left me wondering whether I admired it or not.

  The second monk, who, until that moment, had stood by, his eyes lowered and his hands in his sleeves in a most modest posture, now looked up and said sweetly, “And what may your other purposes be, My Lord?”

  My father put his hands on his hips and laughed outright: “So, my brothers! We Huguenots don’t sanction hearing confession, didn’t you know? So great is your talent that you were going straightaway to hear a confession of my sins right out of my mouth, as if I had any…”

  Then, in a more lively military tone:

  “My brothers, time presses. Continue your offices to the wounded. I must tell you as I take my leave that I admire the devotion that kept you in Sarlat during the plague. Here is an expression of my admiration,” he added, placing several écus in the hand of the elder monk, “if you will take alms from a heretic.”

  “No doubt,” said this worthy monk as he whisked the money into his cape, “our Holy Church considers you a heretic, but as for me, I will judge you here below by your works” (here he smiled) “and I prefer to believe, charitably” (again he smiled) “that you are but a Christian gone astray into a path other than mine, but that we’ll meet at the end of the road.”

  “I accept this augury,” my father said gravely. And having said goodbye, he went off, his arm on my shoulder. When we were safely out of earshot, I said softly to him: “These monks were inside the La Valade house when Forcalquier made his requests to you. Maybe they heard. Is that why you greased their palms?”

  “That’s one of my purposes,” smiled my father. “The other is that they are genuinely poor, truly charitable and completely devoted, none of which is much honoured by the bishopric.”

  When he arrived at the square where our wagon stood (with its funerary cargo of the four dead), my father called Cabusse.

  “As soon as our horses are brought up, Puymartin, I, my sons and Coulondre Iron-arm are going into the city to meet with the consuls, who, as you’ve noticed, still haven’t dared come out of their doors. While we’re gone, Cabusse, you are to command here. Your first duty is to finish off all the wounded brigands, beginning with Forcalquier. This done, if Campagnac’s and Puymartin’s men want to have their way with the butcher-baron’s whores, just close your eyes to these excesses. But make sure no one from Mespech joins them. I tell you this as a Huguenot, but also as a doctor. Some of these willing wenches are infected with the Naples pox, I could see it at first glance. I realize that when men have taken a life they seem to want to make one, which is the reason for all the rape when cities are conquered. But since you’ve got a beautiful and gracious wife, Cabusse, don’t go poking around, as my late wife use to say, in places I wouldn’t touch with the end of my cane.”

  “Amen,” replied Cabusse, pulling on his moustache. “It shall be done, and not done, as you have ordered.”

  The consuls, who had gathered in the city hall with the seneschal and La Porte, complimented my father and Puymartin on such an admirable and bold enterprise, quickly adding, however, that as the city was financially ruined they could never adequately reward this brilliant action. Puymartin responded that the glory they’d won was enough, and my father, made a profound reverence but said nothing. La Porte enquired whether any prisoners had been taken.

  “There are none,” my father answered. “Our soldiers have dispatched every one of them.”

  “’Tis a pity,” mused La Porte. “If we’d had a prisoner, just one, we might have put him on the rack and forced him to tell us where we could find the treasure that the butcher-baron accumulated from the tolls he exacted at the la Lendrevie gate.”

  Somewhat troubled by this speech, I glanced at my father, but he remained impassive.

  “How is it,” La Porte continued, “that there’s not a single survivor from this entire heinous gang?”

  My father still remained silent but Puymartin said, frowning: “Because of our losses, our soldiers were greatly embittered against these brigands.”

  “I see,” said La Porte, obviously dissatisfied.

  And yet he too complimented us generously, though not so effusively as the seneschal, who, as the highest officer of the city, spoke last, assuring us that he would write to the governor of Périgord and that the governor would write to the king. After which, he embraced both my father and Puymartin, and François and Samson, but he forgot to embrace me, doubtless because I was so filthy and bloody. He was a tall gentleman, entirely clad in pale-blue satin topped by a large, exceptionally white ruff, an exquisitely trimmed beard and curly clean hair. He was so pulverized with perfume that with every gesture—and he made many—he fairly embalmed the entire group.

  The two consuls spoke in Périgordian dialect, sprinkled here and there with a few French words; La Porte, as becomes a royal officer, used a French somewhat mongrelized with provincial expressions. But the seneschal, as Monsieur de L. had, spoke pure Parisian French, in a high voice, his articulation short and pinched, his mouth opening scarcely wider than the slot in a church alms box.

  As Puymartin and my father were leaving the hall, the populace, who had been waiting outside, pressed up around them with shouts of acclaim. My father, all smiles, leapt nimbly into his saddle, followed by his sons and Puymartin and Coulondre Iron-arm, who with his one arm had held our horses’ reins during the meeting inside and responded not one single word to the peasants around him who were clamouring for an account of the battle. Throughout Sarlat there was great joy and relief at the realization that the butcher-baron could no longer tyrannize the city, and all the more so since many young rogues within the town had threatened to join up with him and daily made insults and jokes on the townspeople like lackeys and pages at carnival time.

  Making our way through this crowd, our little troop reached the la Lendrevie gate, but just as we were passing under it, my father noticed a man who was weeping as he drove by on a little cart drawn by a red donkey. Telling Puymartin to continue on without him, my father retraced his steps, the rest of us at his heels. The red donkey stopped when it saw its way blocked by our horses, and my father said, “Good day, friend! How goes it? Not well, if I’m to judge by your tears. What’s your name?”
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  “Petremol.”

  “I knew a Petremol from Marcuays who tried to cure his rheumatism by bathing in the ice-cold waters of the fountain of St Avit.”

  “That was my cousin.”

  “And I knew another Petremol from Sireil, whom I almost hanged last year for stealing a sack full of hay from my fields.”

  “He’s also my cousin.”

  “Well, then, Petremol, I feel like I know you because I know your cousins. And where might you be headed with your cartful of skins and pulled by your red donkey? Don’t you know the Norman saying, ‘As treacherous as a red donkey’?”

  “The only traitor I know,” Petremol wept, “is my own destiny, which oppresses me, and not this good beast who only wants to do my bidding. If you’d hanged my Sireil cousin last year, My Lord, I’d envy him. For I know you as well.”

  “You have a very heavy heart, Petremol, and yet you’re not poor as far as I can tell, for you’ve got a donkey, a cart and lots of skins, as well as your trade, for you’re a tanner or harness-maker if I’m not mistaken.”

  “I’m both at once,” Petremol replied, “and for the last year I’ve been working my trade for your cousin Geoffroy de Caumont in his Château des Milandes. But alas, with the plague ended, I’m heading back to my home at Montignac where my wife and children were carried off by the disease, and my house was burnt by the consuls to disinfect the place.”

  “Then they owe you damages.”

  “Which I’ll never collect, since the city’s ruined. But what do my lodgings matter when there’s nobody to put in them, no wife, nor any of my four beautiful children not yet ten years old, as pretty as this fellow,” he said pointing to Samson, who by this time was also in tears over this story. And, indeed, on second glance, Petremol, his hair as red as his donkey’s, was a handsome enough fellow, despite his defeated manner, his unkempt beard and the suffering that lined his face.

  “And where are you headed now?” my father asked.

  “To hang myself, if it weren’t for my donkey who loves me and leads me where he will. He’s the one led me here, for he had a mate here once. But at Sarlat, just as at Montignac, no one needs a harness-maker any more, since all the horses got eaten during the plague. And my donkey can’t find his mate: she must have been eaten as well.”

  “Well then, Petremol, tell your noble donkey to bring you to Mespech. We’ve got horses that are very much alive, an abundance of pelts that need tanning, saddles to make and harnesses to repair, and for you, if you like it, a hearth, a bowl and a bed, lots of company and even a jenny for your donkey.”

  And without pausing for acceptance or thanks, my father turned bridle and rode away so quickly that I found myself at the rear of the company, side by side with Coulondre, who looked at me and cleared his throat as if he were going to say something. I was quite surprised and, trotting along with him, looked at him apprehensively, for I knew that he never opened his mouth without breaking your heart. “So,” he intoned finally in his most funereal voice, “we’ve won again. One’s left us and another’s arrived. And this one, who’s worth his weight in gold, neither stutters nor is cross-eyed. God be praised.”

  Our women greeted us with wails and lamentation when we crossed the last drawbridge into Mespech, Marsal lying dead on the wagon. The Brethren ordered la Maligou and Alazaïs to remove his armour, clothes and boots and to wash his bloodstained body and wrap him in a shroud before laying him on a bed in the room of the north-east tower where the Siorac twins had been quarantined. As was the custom, the shutters were closed and an oil lamp lit. La Maligou, who had already dined, took the first watch. But the dead man was soon visited by Faujanet, who came to measure him for a coffin. Having an ear to fill with her gossip, la Maligou complained in a hushed voice that her masters’ religion prevented her from placing a crucifix in the dead man’s hand. “A lot of good that would do him now!” hissed Faujanet between clenched teeth, la Maligou’s remark disturbing his own mourning.

  For this was the second coffin he’d had to make since his arrival at Mespech (the first being for my mother). Greatly troubled inside, he began to wonder if, by virtue of the power of numbers, he wouldn’t soon be making a third. “But don’t you see? It’s still the custom,” whined la Maligou, who couldn’t imagine how Cockeyed Marsal would ever get up to heaven without a crucifix in his hands.

  “What’s certain,” said Faujanet, continuing his thoughts out loud as he took his second measurements of the body, “is that if I’m the third one to go, it won’t be me who builds my coffin.” Faujanet seemed suddenly calmed by his own reasoning, and pushing his idea a bit further, found it a reassurance for his own future; turning his attention to the dead man, he began to pity his fate. “Poor Marsal, who was alive only just this morning and had such a good appetite for his soup.” He said “poor Marsal” and not “Cockeyed Marsal” out of reverence for the dead, whose closed eyelids would never open again.

  “Poor Marsal,” echoed la Maligou, “when I think how brave he was, how good a worker, how he was sober as Jesus and as little a womanizer (a fault in a living man and a virtue among the dead) as you could find. Our masters will bury him dry-eyed and puritanical like they did Madame, according to their new religion.”

  “When I think,” continued Faujanet, “that poor Marsal not long ago refused flat out, as I did, to become miller down at les Beunes, because of the danger of being killed by roving bands of brigands. And here he is all stiff and cold, and Coulondre Iron-arm working at the mill, drinking his fill and every night leading his little Jacotte to the mounting blocks. Not that I envy him: I don’t hold much with women, as you know, Maligou.”

  “Alas, there’s no holy water either,” moaned la Maligou, “which my masters says is idolatrous. But it’s still the best thing to keep the seventy-seven demons of hell away from the deceased.”

  “If I didn’t have a gammy leg,” mused Faujanet, “instead of staying to guard the chateau with the écuyer and Alazaïs, my masters would have taken me to Sarlat, and I might be lying here, and not building your coffin, my poor Marsal. Which is proof,” he whispered to the corpse, “that it’s better to have a limp than be cockeyed.”

  All the while, in a room in the south-west tower, Barberine was busy washing away the filth and blood as I sat in a steaming tub, though I’d assured her I was now man enough to wash myself. “Not on your life, my little yellow beak, for who would wash your back?” I was too sad to resist further and gave myself over to the caresses and scrubs she lavished with those large hands, which rubbed good Mespech soap over my whole body. “Sweet Jesus,” Barberine said admiringly, “look at these little rascals who’ve grown up right beside me and I didn’t even notice it. This little Pierre whom I nursed when I was only eighteen, and now look at him! Thirteen and almost a man! Big shoulders, his chest’s all filled out, his thighs as hard as iron and hair growing everywhere and prancing like a stallion.”

  “Alas,” I moaned, “I don’t much feel like prancing.”

  “All the same,” said Barberine, “they tell me you did well in the battle, killing three of those rascals, two with bullets and a third with your sword.”

  “Yes, but the third one,” I muttered, hanging my head, “I had to pull my sword out of him and he vomited blood all over me.”

  At this, Barberine sighed, but said nothing. She poured a vat of hot water over my head and shoulders to rinse me, told me to get out of the tub and stretch out on the bed, where she began to massage me with all the cares and tenderness she’d showered on me as a child, fondling and caressing me, and with her deep singing voice, spreading a litany of sweet nothings over me: “My sweet, my pretty little rooster, God’s little pearl, my fresh little heart.”

  Fresh though it may have been, my heart was still heavy with lugubrious thoughts, and in such a flood of tenderness it couldn’t contain itself any longer. I clung to Barberine and, burying my head in her beautiful breasts, burst into sobs. “There, there, my pretty!” calmed Barberine, lea
ning against the wall and cradling me in her bountiful arms.

  But the more she cradled me with her arms and her coaxing, kissing my forehead, the more I gave in to my tears and a deep sadness. I would have gone on sobbing a lot longer had not little Hélix appeared at the door of the winding staircase—where my mother had once appeared in Barberine’s absence to bid me goodnight—her black eyes flashing in anger.

  “Monsieur Pierre,” she broke in rudely, “My Lord is waiting on you for dinner.”

  I stood up, dried my tears, put on the clean clothes Barberine had laid out for me from the chest, and followed little Hélix down the winding staircase. At the last step, out of her mother’s earshot, she turned, stared at me, her eyes blazing, and hissed in a low voice filled with fury:

  “You big sissy, aren’t you ashamed to be crying like a baby on the bosom of an old lady!”

  “An old lady!” I replied indignantly. “What a way to speak of your mother! She’s barely over thirty! And who gave you permission to call me a sissy!”

  “I’ll call you what I wish! Big sissy, if I wish. Coward, if I wish. Crybaby, if I wish!”

  “Well,” I answered hotly, “this is for all your kind wishes!” And I slapped her hard on both cheeks.

  “Oh, my Pierre,” she cried, less terrified by my blows than by the coldness of my stare.

  “Your Pierre isn’t yours any longer,” I said haughtily, “and tonight I won’t come you know where. Not tonight or any other night.”

  Whereupon I turned coldly away and walked briskly to the common room, distracted for the moment from my sombre thoughts by my quarrel with her.

  All the combatants were seated around the table, but nothing could have been further from the warm feast which that very morning before daybreak my father had foreseen for us: “Everyone can tell the others of his exploits, whose fame, I assure you, will resound for a long time in our villages.” Instead, everyone was eating, but no one made a sound, and not even the chickens roasted on the spit over a fire of vine branches, nor the selection of succulent meats, nor even Mespech’s best vintage wine could loosen our tongues or lighten our spirits. For the deceased was still with us as he had been this morning, but now he lay in the north-east tower, a gaping hole in the middle of his body. Cabusse and Coulondre Iron-arm, who had known Cockeyed Marsal twenty-four years, since 1540 when he had entered the Norman legion as a captain, unabashedly wept as they ate, their noses in their plates. They hurried through their dinner, swallowing everything without tasting anything, and before the meal was over asked permission from the Brethren to withdraw, one to the le Breuil farm, the other to the les Beunes mill so they could reassure their wives. Permission was scarcely granted before Jonas requested the same: “Sarrazine is pregnant,” he explained, “and is worried by my absence.”