The Brethren, Page 32

  I was in the habit, as I have said, of getting up very early, disdaining my bed once I was awake, and of going down to the common room at daybreak, before la Maligou had lit the fire and boiled the milk. In truth, I liked to be the one to rekindle the fire, blowing with all my lungs on the coals, turning them bright red before throwing on the kindling. Such was my employment on 29th August, enjoying the silence of the sleeping chateau and the early-morning birdsong, when I heard a faint noise in the larder, the cool room scarcely lit by an arrow slit on its north side, in which our many slabs of salted meat hung from the rafters. Thinking it must be our old tom stalking an errant mouse, I crept up on tiptoe to the door to watch his sport. What was my surprise when, instead of cat, rat or mouse, I spied a lad of about fifteen, clothed in rags and dripping wet, sitting on our stool, a ham hock on his knees, chewing one large slice whose ends protruded greedily from both sides of his mouth, and already sawing away with his trenchant knife on the next. I stood open-mouthed and mute on the sill, scarcely believing my eyes and wondering how this fellow had managed to scale our walls, when he suddenly raised his head and saw me. He leapt to his feet like a tennis ball from a racquet and, dropping the ham, rushed at me, knife in hand.

  Cabusse had taught me how to parry such a treacherous attack. I gave him a kick in the stomach and, as he bent double from the blow, I applied a second to his face. The knife fell from his hands, but not the ham from his teeth, and he fell like a sack. Looking around me for something to tie him up with, I spied a rope and grappling hook next to the stool where he’d been perched. I bound his hands behind him and, dragging him unconscious into the common room, I leant him against one of the legs of the heavy oak table and tied him fast.

  This done, I sat down to catch my breath, dumb with astonishment. For, even with a rope and grappling hook, how could this lad have evaded Escorgol’s acute ears, scaled the surrounding wall, crossed the trap-filled meadow without harm, flown over the three drawbridges, and despite the triple locks on the lodging doors found himself in our larder calmly chewing on a slab of salt pork? In came la Maligou, who, at the sight of the thief, stopped in her tracks. “What’s this? What’s this?” she stuttered.

  “I don’t know. I found him in the larder.” La Maligou, her entire fat frame shaking, threw her arms heavenward and, clucking like a terrified hen chased by the fox, cried, “Lord God! Sweet Jesus! Holy Mary and St Joseph, protect me! The Devil’s got loose in our lodgings. Or at least one of the seventy-seven demons of hell!” And, crossing herself, she ran to fetch our wooden salt cellar and began throwing pinches of salt around the thief.

  “Silly goose!” I said, grabbing the box from her hands. “Throwing salt around like that! And invoking the Virgin! Shall I tell my father on you?”

  “But it’s the Devil himself!” she howled, crossing herself again and so agitated and all atremble that her bonnet fell down around her neck. At this instant, the thief opened his blurry eyes, and even before completely regaining his senses began chewing the piece of ham which had stuck, unconscious that he was, in his mouth. “It’s the Devil!” howled la Maligou, retreating as though hell itself were opening up before her, and falling on her knees, her eyes turning in their sockets, her hands joined fervently, she shrieked: “Oh Holy Mother! As one woman to another, protect me from this demon!”

  “That’s enough, you ninny!” I commanded sternly. “That’s not the Devil. Can’t you see he’s eating?”

  “But the Devil eats, too, Master Pierre!” cried la Maligou, nearly forgetting her terror in her astonishment at my ignorance about Satan’s ways. She pulled herself to her feet, saying, “The Evil One has the same needs as man only multiplied by seven. He boozes like a curate in his parish house, stuffs himself like a smithy, pisses like a cow, burps like a king and fornicates like a rat in straw.”

  “He fornicates?” I said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Oh yes!” replied la Maligou. “He’s got a shaft seven times the size of a man’s, and on Sabbath nights from midnight to daybreak he mounts seven times seven witches without stopping.”

  “That would suit you, silly gossip!” I laughed. “You’ve got your quiver open to every arrow.”

  “Holy Mother of God, keep me from such evil thoughts!” answered la Maligou, lowering her eyes modestly. “And if such evil thoughts get the better of me, at least don’t let it be my fault, but by force.”

  “Get on with you, you corpulent bawd!” I said. “Go tell my father about our unexpected visitor. No wait,” I added, “on second thoughts, I’ll go myself.”

  “Jesus!” howled la Maligou, all a-tremble like jelly. “I can’t stay here alone with this frightful demon who can fly over our ramparts and pass through our walls!”

  “Go then, and inform the écuyer. And I’ll go tell my father. This devil won’t go anywhere tied as he is.” And yet, as I ran, I couldn’t be sure, and, arriving breathless at my father’s room, I knocked impatiently. No answer came. Astonished at this silence, I tried the doorknob, and partway opening the door, glanced around the room. I saw the bed unmade and the sheets all disarranged, but no Father! “The Devil,” thought I. “One appears, the other disappears! That’s strange!” Suspecting, however, that this devilishness was all too human, I quietly closed the door and then, knocking as loud as I could, I shouted, “Help! Father, come quickly!” I then rushed as fast as my legs would carry me back to the kitchen where my thief was still sitting, tied fast to the table leg, happily chewing his bit of ham, saliva dripping from both sides of his mouth. He certainly had a good appetite for one who was to hang from the end of our baronial gibbet within the hour. Sitting down opposite him, I watched him in silence and was filled with pity. For he was a handsome lad of about my age, neither brutal nor wild-eyed at all.

  He seemed to experience some difficulty swallowing our ham, since it was very hard, dry and salty, and when he’d finally managed it with several great glottal efforts I went to fill him a bowl of milk, and putting it to his lips, gave him to drink, which he did quite avidly, looking at me all the while with his different-coloured eyes, one blue the other brown, which gave him a strange look to be sure, yet his aspect was also as sweet and affectionate as a dog’s. I noticed that his head was covered with thick, short-cropped tawny hair.

  The milk swallowed, he gave me a big, naive and friendly smile with his wide mouth full of white, pointed teeth, as though he’d already forgotten that he’d attacked me with a knife, and that I’d kicked him unconscious. As I stared at him, the common room was filling with our servants, all them quiet as mice and moving along the walls at a good distance from our visitor, their eyes wide and their breath short from excitement and curiosity. Faujanet, the Siorac twins and Marsal put up a good front, but the group of women and children were all huddled in the far corner shaking, Jacquou in Barberine’s arms, Annet pulling at her skirt, and—shame on her for all her seventeen years—little Hélix cowering, not to mention Catherine, face white as snow between her braids, and Little Sissy moaning. La Maligou muttered strange prayers with many signs of the cross, grimaces, affectations and gestures over her bodice as if she were trying to defend it from all the infernal armies. Not a sign of Franchou. I noticed it immediately.

  In came my elder brother François, in truth no paler or more distant than usual (that is, since Diane’s departure), his long face pinched and proper and affecting not to see me—proof that he already knew I was the hero of the hour. Announced by the heavy tramp of her woodsman’s gait, Alazaïs appeared shortly thereafter and, scorning the women’s corner, went to join ranks with the Siorac brothers whom she towered over by a good six inches. From there, her arms crossed over her breasts, she watched the scene without batting an eye, fearing no mortal man in this transitory life, her eyes set on the Eternal.

  Samson, of course, looked for me the minute he entered the room to make sure I was all right, his shining hair creating a halo around his head, then came over to me, took my hand and stared at the intruder. Having f
inished this inspection, incapable of fear or hatred, he smiled at our prisoner.

  With Sauveterre limping at his heels, my father finally made his appearance, buttoning his doublet, holding himself very erect, and managing somehow to look both tired and dashing, though with a countenance nowhere near as angelic as Samson’s. “Where did this fellow come from?” he asked, indicating our intruder in a lighthearted way that seemed hardly to question his presence within our walls.

  Rising, I quickly gave a reasonably honest though not entirely complete account of things, omitting his attack on my person since I didn’t want him charged outright. This omission was greatly appreciated by my poor captive, as I could see from his different-coloured eyes, so gratefully attached to mine.

  While I spoke, my father gradually descended from the happy cloud on which he’d floated in, and by the time I’d finished he’d managed to get both feet on the ground, and found an appropriately concerned and sombre aspect. For if this young rascal could get over our walls, across our moats and through our defences into the heart of our lodgings, others could as well, which would be much more serious.

  “So, you rascal,” said my father, remaining a good distance from him, but for very different reasons than la Maligou’s, “what’s your name?”

  “Miroul.”

  “And where are you from?”

  “A hamlet named la Malonie, near Vergt.”

  “Ah,” sighed my father with relief, “from the north!” (The part of Périgord that had not yet been touched by the plague.) “Did you pass through any infected towns?”

  “No. I avoided all the towns and villages. I lived and slept in the woods.”

  “How did you become a thief?”

  “On the 25th of last month, a band of armed brigands came by night and killed my family,” said Miroul, his colourful eyes brimming with tears. “They cut my father’s, mother’s, brothers’ and sisters’ throats and raped all the women. I hid in a haystack in the barn, and as soon as the devils were drunk I took this grappling hook and a knife and fled.”

  “So you became a brigand in turn?”

  “Not completely,” explained Miroul raising his head proudly. “I don’t take anything from the shepherds or the peasants. I only steal from the chateaux. And never the same one twice. And only for my food. Three nights ago it was Laussel. Night before last, Commarque. Last night, Fontenac. And tonight, Mespech.”

  “Fontenac?” asked my father intrigued. “You managed to get inside the Château de Fontenac?”

  “It was child’s play,” replied Miroul. “Of the four, Mespech was the hardest to get inside.”

  “And how do you do it, Miroul?”

  “I cover my feet with rags, and my grappling hook too, and I scale the walls just before dawn.”

  “Why so late?”

  “That’s the hour the watchmen always fall asleep, feeling night to be almost over.”

  “What about the dogs?”

  “The dogs smell me, lick me and never bark.”

  “It would be miraculous, if true!”

  “My Lord,” said Miroul, drawing himself up indignantly, “misfortune has made me a thief but not a liar. If you wish, I can show you how I got in, from the bottom of your surrounding wall right to your larder.”

  Jean de Siorac contemplated him for a moment and then said coldly, whether in jest or not, I could not tell: “That would put you to a lot of trouble since we’re going to hang you afterwards.”

  Miroul shook his head more out of sadness than fear. “I’m not afraid of the rope, since I have no love for the life I lead. Solitude by day and villainy by night. My hunger is the only thing that keeps me going. But I’m sore troubled by my conscience, knowing that the Lord hates all abomination, and that He is great and in His power sees everything.”

  At this biblical quotation, Sauveterre pricked up his ears. “Miroul, are you a Huguenot?”

  “Indeed so, and my deceased family as well.”

  After a pause, my father said: “Well, then, Miroul, I want you to demonstrate your skills. Untie him, Pierre.” And turning to our servants, he added, “Sauveterre, my sons and I will go alone to watch. The rest of you shall remain here and breakfast. Let no one peek outside.”

  Poor Escorgol was so devastated with chagrin after he appeared in his window to hear my father’s brief account of the episode that he was unable to say a word. Normally a ready tongue, all the poor watchman could do was to stick his little fingers in his ears and turn them like tops. “Escorgol,” said my father, “close your window, lie down on your mat and listen carefully. This rascal is going to try to repeat his exploit.”

  “As you wish, My Lord,” murmured Escorgol, flushed with humiliation, his brush of hair, normally so proudly plumed, limply falling into his eyes.

  On my father’s command, the group divided in two. Sauveterre, François and Samson, each armed with a pistol in his belt, accompanied Miroul outside the walls. I remained inside the enclosure with my father and the three mastiffs named, like their unfortunate predecessors who had been killed by the Gypsies, Aeacus, Minos and Rhadamanthus, complicated mythological names that had been Périgordized by our servants into “Acha” (hatchet), “Minhard” (delicate mouth) and “Redamandard” (he who asks for seconds).

  Noiselessly, muffled as it was in rags, the grappling hook landed on the top of the north rampart, at the farthest point from Escorgol’s watchtower. Miroul soon appeared, pulling his cord behind him, unhitched his hook and, running noiselessly along the top of the wall, reached a point on the eastern side from which he could toss his hook to the branch of a walnut tree a few toises away. Gripping the cord with both hands, he swung out, flying over the entire area where the traps were set and landing at the foot of the tree. Again he extricated his hook, and as our three mastiffs rushed up he fell full length on the ground, lying quite still and offering his neck, which they sniffed along with his face and whole body, and then they left off growling, stopped bristling and began wagging their tails. Miroul raised one hand and all of a sudden the dogs were competing with each other for his caress. This trick lasted for a few minutes, first while Miroul was lying down, then crouched, then on his knees and finally standing, slowing all his movements and accompanying them with gentling sounds to each mastiff. With the dogs now quieted and even licking his hand, Miroul rewound his rope into a bandolier, which he slung over his shoulder, and headed for the moat. He slipped into the water, swam noiselessly over to our wash house and scaled one of its pillars with remarkable agility, slipping onto the roof in the twinkling of an eye and scampering up to its highest point.

  Next came the hardest part of all. Looping his rope again, he tossed his grappling hook, aiming for one of the metal clips that Sauveterre had had placed at intervals in the wall, just before the Gypsies’ attack, to hold the torches in place. This was a small target and Miroul had to make several throws before succeeding in anchoring his talon. And the climb was not without its dangers and difficulties. The sconce being set nearly half a toise from the nearest crenellation, he had to hang by one hand with his feet braced in the wall, in obvious peril of losing his balance and falling into the water, then undo the hook and toss it again to the top of the curtain. Again he hit his mark.

  “Let’s go and get the others,” said my father. “Miroul is already inside the chateau. And other than the dogs, I’ll warrant that Escorgol heard nothing.”

  “Father,” I asked, trotting along by his side, my throat tight with worry, “after such an exploit, you’re not going to hang him are you?”

  My father’s expression hardened. “I’m not overjoyed about it, but yes, I must.”

  “But think of the service he’s rendered Mespech by pointing out the holes in our defences: the walnut tree, the wash house, the sconces for the torches, and the larder window.”

  “That’s all quite true. And yet I must hang him. He’s a thief.”

  “A very petty thief. It has cost you a mere slice of ham to learn Mespec
h’s weaknesses.”

  “He could have killed you.”

  “But he didn’t try,” said I, troubled to have to repeat this lie even for a good cause. “What’s more,” I added, pricked by my conscience towards a sort of half-truth, “even if he had, who could blame him? A rat bites when he’s cornered.”

  “Of course, I understand. But he will die. He’s a thief.”

  “If I were fifteen, and my family had been slaughtered and I’d become an orphan without a sol, wouldn’t I become a thief as well?”

  “You, perhaps, but not Samson.”

  I noted, not without a tinge of secret pleasure, that my father didn’t even think to mention François. I added: “Samson, all right, Samson’s an angel. But on my sixth birthday he stole a pot of honey to nourish me. Observe, Father, the enormous difference in retribution: a lashing for a pot of honey, and the rope for a slice of ham.”

  “’Tis a pity,” said my father coldly, “that you’re to study medicine. You’d make an excellent lawyer.”

  “May I go on, anyway?”

  “Miroul will be hanged. But you may continue.”

  “My father, are we going to hang a lad who’s bold enough and agile enough to succeed in getting into the Château de Fontenac by night without striking a blow? Who can tell if one day we won’t need such talents?”

  Here I hit the bull’s eye, I believe. Yet my father did not yet consent to admit it. Trying to sound as gruff as possible, he countered, “I don’t know where you get your obstinacy. Maybe from your mother.”

  “No, Monsieur, begging your pardon, but from yourself. What’s more, I resemble you a lot. Everyone says so.”

  Now my father knew this very well, but I knew he enjoyed hearing me say it.

  “Now that’s an excellent captatio benevolentiae if I ever heard one!” he said, happy though not taken in by this appeal to the jury’s beneficence. “But we’re nearly out of time. You must conclude.” And indeed, at that very moment, we were passing over the third drawbridge.