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The Brethren, Page 36

Robert Merle


  Those three having left, the mood was even darker than before. My father tried to get each of us to tell what he had done in the battle with the brigands in la Lendrevie. We obeyed him, but they were sad tales, since neither our hearts nor our pride were in it. During the conversation that followed my father’s request, little Hélix, who was serving at table, but whom I’d avoided looking at even once, sidled up to me to fill my goblet and whispered in my ear:

  “My Pierre, if you won’t smile at me I’m going straightaway to throw myself down the well.”

  To which I replied in a whisper: “Silly flirt, you’ll spoil our drinking water.”

  Still, I smiled at her, though only on one side of my face so that she’d know that I’d only halfway pardoned her.

  My father, seeing our servants’ dispiritedness, was too polite to insist further and hurried to finish his dinner, which, though conceived as a victory feast, resembled a wake—though no doubt had Marsal died of a sickness the guests would have been a good deal livelier (wine aiding, of course). But from their discomfort, their furtive glances, their persistent sadness, it was clear that what troubled them was that this death could have been avoided and that my father had advanced his own glory and secret fortune (but how could our servants have known of it?) at the expense of his servants.

  At la Lendrevie, my father had explained to Cabusse that the raping that followed the fall of a city is due to the fact that when a man takes a life he wants to make another one. Besides the fact that little Hélix had secretly learnt from la Maligou about herbs and “where to put them”, I didn’t feel much like giving her anything at all that night but asking instead for tenderness and comfort in her sweet embrace. But she didn’t see things my way, and by means of tickling and caresses finally got what she wanted, though only once. And when shortly afterwards she began again, I told her rudely to stop her carrying on and hold still, and if possible to keep silent, for my heart wasn’t into such games.

  “My Pierre,” she asked (for she wasn’t able to hold her tongue for very long), “what makes you so sad?”

  “Everything about our expedition,” I said, “from the beginning to the end.”

  “Marsal’s death?”

  “That too.”

  “Killing three men?”

  “Yes. Especially the third, when I had to pull my sword from his body.”

  She wanted to continue, but I told her to stop her questions and her sneaky movements, and to leave me to myself. Which she did, but being unaccustomed to so much silence and immobility she went straight to sleep.

  Her body felt sweet and warm in my arms and wholly mine as she slept. How could I ever have told her that what made such a knot in my throat wasn’t Cockeyed Marsal, or my peasant stuck through and through, but rather the strange commerce between Forcalquier and my father, which made my hero seem less great?

  12

  ABOUT TWO MONTHS before our expedition against the butcher-baron in la Lendrevie, Catherine de’ Medici and Charles IX had decided that, with peace now restored (though in fact it was only half restored), they would take an extraordinary tour on horseback of the entire kingdom. This cavalcade was to last two full years, during which the regent and the young sovereign were preceded and followed by their men at arms and accompanied by so many ministers and royal officers that it seemed as if they wanted to transport the entire Louvre palace with them. Such a procession greatly impressed their subjects, who, to be sure, had never before seen so much silk nor so much gold on so many of God’s creatures. It also greatly disheartened them, for everywhere this magnificent company travelled they left behind neither meat nor egg nor grain of wheat, the valleys in their wake being so devastated that they looked like a forest after an infestation of may beetles.

  In the midst of this travelling court, coloured like so many spring flowers in their bright clothes, were eighty maids of honour, chosen for their beauty, and making a radiant retinue around Catherine de’ Medici. Strangely enough they were called the “flying angels”. And yet however one might understand the word “flying”, they lifted up nothing other than young men’s hearts. And far from flying through the air like angels, they descended, when required, to the lowest favours with men in order to serve their mistress’s designs. They could flush out an evil intention, surprise a plot, bend a will. Secret agents, state spies, Machiavellis in petticoats, their tread was not so light as it was political, and they paid for confidences with their ravishing bodies, consenting to serve as the sumptuous means to ends only the queen mother could know. One of these “angels” visited the Prince de Condé in prison after the battle of Dreux and so blinded him with her dazzling charms that he signed without reading the unfortunate Edict of Amboise, which Calvin and Huguenots of conscience so bitterly reproached him for.

  Our allies, after so much torture and murder, expected only the worst and always doubted appearances, wondering about the ultimate goal and secret purpose of this splendid cavalcade over the roads of France, especially given the terrible heat of 1564, the kingdom scarcely back on its feet, despite the charming ditty of Ronsard, for whom:

  The Frenchman is like the green willow tree,

  The more it is cut the more we will see,

  Many new branches and greeny bright leaves

  Taking vigour from every new hurt that it grieves.

  Beautiful verses, though somewhat dishonest and flattering, France being still badly beset with mutilations from the civil war, from famine and from the plague. Yet despite this ruin and the thousands of corpses, who were swept out of the way just in time to let the queen mother pass, Catherine insisted on showing both the kingdom to Charles IX and the young king to the subjects over whom he held sway. Or perhaps, as she went from city to city lending an ear to the Huguenots here and to the Catholics there, hearing all their reciprocal complaints, her intention was to pacify her subjects by an outward show of equality.

  It was all highly suspect. Not that there weren’t any concessions to our cause. Charles IX occasionally scolded parliament and the governors for excluding Huguenots from affairs of state. He gave permission to the reformers in Bordeaux to refrain from decorating their houses for Catholic processions, and dispensed them in the courts of justice from swearing by St Anthony. And yet, as the royal cavalcade progressed from town to town, additional restrictions were tacked on to the Edict of Amboise, which was already bad enough. In June the king forbade reformed merchants from opening their shops on Catholic feast days. In that same month, he outlawed Huguenot religious services from anywhere the king happened to be. In August, he enjoined all judges from admitting to their chateaux any reformers other than their own vassals and servants.

  The Brethren sought in vain any firm principle in the king’s inconstancy, which seemed dictated merely by circumstance or personal pressures. The king, who was only fourteen, yet seemed more childish than his age, had no will other than the regent’s. The niece of Pope Leo X, Catherine had inherited her uncle’s high forehead, bulging eyes and deep scepticism. Foreign to religious passion and almost to faith itself, she neither hated nor loved the Reformation: it was but a pawn on the chessboard of France which she could play according to the moment or need, saving it or sacrificing it as she wished.

  In mid June the Brethren found new reasons to grieve. A courier brought news that Calvin had died on 27th May in Geneva, worn out by his great work. The Reformation had changed the face of the world. Through his enlightened writing, his often improvised yet clear and carefully chosen words, by the firmness of his doctrine and the integrity of his character, by the ardent proselytizing which inspired his many letters, which touched so many people, by the democratic organization he had given to the churches, by the inspired pastors he had taken time off from his many duties to train, he had spread the reform from Geneva to Lausanne, on into France, England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Hungary and Palestine.

  “Calvin is dead,” wrote Sauveterre in the Book of Reason, “but his work will live on.”r />
  “I believe it will, too,” added my father, “and yet our fiercest ordeals are yet to come. In this strange cavalcade of the regent and the king across the kingdom, I think I can detect a gathering of clouds which, sooner or later, are going to open up over our heads.”

  At the end of June, when the grass had grown tall in our fields and the summer heat threatened to dry it out too fast, my father sent me to the le Breuil farm and the quarry to seek Cabusse and Jonas to help with the haying the next day. I went alone on my black pony, Samson having sprained his ankle in a fall from his horse the day before. Not finding Jonas at his quarry, I set out to look for Cabusse, and caught sight of him, hair beginning to grow back where he’d been wounded, making a fence so that he wouldn’t always be having to watch his flock of sheep.

  “An expensive project,” I laughed as I dismounted, leaving Accla to graze freely.

  “Not so much expense really,” answered Cabusse, pulling on his moustache, and happy for an excuse to pause in his work. “The fence posts come from my own woods. Anyway, I’m rich again since the baron gave me thirty écus for the expedition to Sarlat.”

  “Thirty écus! Were you the only one to get paid?”

  “Oh no. The baron gave twenty écus to Jonas, twenty to Coulondre Iron-arm, twenty to Escorgol, twenty to Benoît and twenty-five to Michel, since Michel was wounded. But Michel said he wouldn’t take more than his brother, and returned five écus.”

  “And you got thirty?”

  “Five more than the others because I was wounded and five because I was in command.” After a moment of reflection, I said, “This booty has troubled my conscience. Where did it all come from if not from the purses of the people of Sarlat who had been paying tolls to the butcher-baron?”

  “Well, but who liberated the people of Sarlat from the claws of this scoundrel? Booty is a right of war. And the liberation of Sarlat was well worth this little tax on the fat burghers who stayed quietly at home in bed while we were fighting.”

  “So that’s how you see it, Cabusse?” I said astonished. “And what about killing all the wounded?”

  “An act of mercy for those who were caught. If I’d been one of those good-for-nothings condemned to the worst tortures, I’d have paid to be killed.”

  And that’s just what Forcalquier did, I thought. But I said nothing. Cathau had just appeared in the sun at the foot of the meadow, all fresh in a red petticoat bordered in blue, her bonnet perched on her head, her feet bare in the new grass and carrying a pretty little baby in her bare arms.

  “Good day, Cathau!” I cried with a playfulness I’d learnt from my father, though I felt a pang in my heart, for she’d served for so long as the chambermaid to Isabelle de Siorac that I could never see her without thinking of my mother and the medallion I wore about my neck.

  “Good day, Master Pierre!” she returned. And added eagerly, and not without a hint of malice: “What news of Mespech? I hear Franchou is quite pregnant.”

  “Who will ever keep a woman’s tongue from wagging?” said Cabusse unhappily.

  “Well it did seem to me,” I confessed “that Franchou was indeed getting a bit stout. But as for the cause, I couldn’t say. You’d have to ask my father, who is a doctor.”

  “Well said, Master Pierre!” laughed Cabusse, as Cathau turned away, confounded by my response. But she had also turned in order to nurse her baby, since, unlike Barberine, she wouldn’t show her breast in public, Cabusse being too jealous.

  “Anyway,” I said, “our plan failed and we lost a man.”

  “Hey, Master Pierre,” said Cabusse straightening up, a hand on his hip and the other stroking his moustache. “Plans in war are like thrusts in fencing. The best cogitated of ’em” (he favoured this word “cogitated” lately having learnt it from my father) “the best prepared and the best executed sometimes get parried.”

  “But Cockeyed Marsal is dead.”

  “He died in combat. It’s the best death and comes quickly. It’s a pity for us, but lucky for him never to know the sweat and suffering of a stinking sickbed.”

  “Hey! Don’t talk about such things, Jéhan Cabusse!” said Cathau, turning slightly so that I just barely caught a glimpse of part of her breast. “Those are foolish and sorrowful words and they give me the shivers.”

  “If Master Pierre weren’t here, I’d quickly change your shivers into frissons!” joked Cabusse with a laugh. “But I’m not interested in sorrow. And the baron did a worthy thing in telling Faujanet to make a coffin out of chestnut to bury his old soldier. That’s a lot of expense for a servant when you think about it. I know many a gentlemen in the region who has buried his mercenaries right in the ground just sewn up in sacking.”

  “Thank God,” I said modestly, “the Brethren are rich.”

  “But they’ve got their hearts in the right place as well,” said Cabusse. “And remember what Calvin said: ‘Gold and silver are worthy creatures when they are put to good use.’”

  This quotation hardly surprised me since Cabusse had gone from a lukewarm Catholic to a fervent Huguenot, I mean deep down in the grain of his being, though he was still the same fun-loving, joking Gascon on the surface.

  “Well, I must be on my way,” I said. “Otherwise Accla will eat your whole field like a grasshopper in wheat.”

  “There’s no lack of grass on my le Breuil farm,” Cabusse proclaimed proudly.

  “Here, Accla!” I called. But Accla, a few steps away, her reins tied to her withers, entirely absorbed in her feast, carefully selecting the sweetest and most savoury grasses, leaving the less appealing ones to the sheep who would come after, pretended not to hear me, her eyelids batting hypocritically over her oblique eyes.

  “Accla, come here!” I called more sharply, striking my boot with my whip. Pulling out a last mouthful of grass with a sigh, Accla remembered her manners and, trotting over to us with her gracious and lofty gait, head held high, her mane well brushed, she came seeking caresses from each of us, making a friendly “pfffut” and even giving a little lick to the baby.

  “She’s a beauty,” said Cabusse. “Did you ever see such a gorgeous horse come out of such a wicked place?”

  “Master Pierre,” Cathau said, “you should breed her. It’s time.”

  “I know,” I agreed, “leaping into the saddle. “The problem is finding a stallion of her same breed and colouring. Goodbye, Cathau. See you tomorrow, Cabusse!”

  “See you tomorrow! At daybreak!”

  Unlike the terrible drought of 1563, when Mespech had very nearly hanged Petremol’s cousin for stealing grass from our fields, 1564 was a year of abundant hay, especially for those, like the Brethren, who were smart enough to cut it and get it in early, for there were heavy rains at the beginning of July, followed immediately by a stifling heatwave which dried the harvests to perfection but must have seriously inconvenienced—we often joked about this—all the precious courtesans dressed in silk who were travelling the highways and byways of France with the king.

  During the haying, our Petremol, leaving off his saddle and harness work, proved he was a good field hand, taking just the right cuts with his scythe, moving through his swathe in a straight line, keeping the general rhythm set by the lead cutter and moving at the same pace as his neighbours. And when it came time to pause and sharpen the blades, he put aside his sorrows and got into the spirit of the day, catching on quickly to the jokes and responding in kind, brushing off cracks about the colour of his hair with easy laughter—the kind of laughter that relaxes a man and gives him the heart to attack his work without complaint. For men are a lot like women in their work: able to get pleasure from their tongues to compensate for the pains of their labour.

  In the evening of the last day of haying, the Brethren retired early because of the many long days in the saddle riding watch over the hayers. Samson and I stayed up with the servants and tenant farmers as they sat around the big table, all the windows open wide to the summer evening, and two fingers of plum brandy in
their cups. When la Maligou finally sat down among us with heavy sighs and a series of “Aïma! Aïma!” to indicate that, even if she hadn’t been out haying like Alazaïs, she’d been slaving like the damned over our supper, she looked over at Petremol and said with utter seriousness: “My poor Petremol, hair redder than yours I’ve never laid eyes on.”

  Petremol, who thought it was another joke, just smiled and said, “Red hair I’ve got and so has my donkey, but a braver beast than him or me I’ve never laid eyes on either.” The rest of us smiled at this, but not la Maligou.

  “I’m not joking,” she said gravely. “It’s a great rarity for a man to have such red hair.”

  “Hey, Maligou!” called Cabusse, Cathau’s head leaning on his shoulder and their baby asleep in her arms. “Don’t go getting fooled! Petremol’s no Gypsy captain!”

  “And he hasn’t got a magic wand!” Escorgol chimed in, always quick on the uptake. Everyone laughed, and Alazaïs, disgusted by this turn of the conversation, got up from table and left without a word to anyone, her neck stiff and her back straight. As soon as the door had closed behind her, Escorgol put in: