Heretic Dawn (47 page)

Like Monsieur de Montcalm, I worshipped Christ, but not in the same way: therefore I was a wicked man! An outlaw! A gallows bird! And if his daughter persisted in loving me, then death in the cloister would be her lot! Full of a deep selfishness that was so limitless its roots could not be seen, Monsieur de Montcalm sacrificed everything for his own salvation, trampling underfoot our young lives for his little part of Paradise, as if death were the goal and not simply the end of his life!

As for me, ’tis certain that for my Angelina I could have accepted the idols, the saints, the adoration of Mary (even if it were only lip service) and even the practice of heard confession (to which, you will remember, I had been constrained at peril of my life by the monks of the Baron de Caudebec), but could I have ever resigned myself to so deeply wound my father and Sauveterre by making such a public renunciation? Ah, Fogacer had it right when he said I was more a member of a party than one of a Church: the zeal of the Churches did not inflame me in the least, for everywhere I looked I saw only too well how inhuman were its results. How could I ever rip from my heart, without devastating it completely and making me hateful to my own self, my fidelity to the father I loved so much, to Uncle Sauveterre, to Samson and to Mespech, whose very stones would have cried out against this betrayal?

Suffering has a way of enduring. And how slowly time passes when we are aggrieved. The worst is the kind that leaves your eyes dry, your heart wounded and your understanding so unhinged that you’re only half alive, or more than half dead: the future rises up like a wall you have neither the power nor the will to scale, and you have no strength to desire anything but the one who is gone.

Seeing her already entombed in a cloister amid a cadre of nuns embittered by the vinegar of chastity and seeking revenge on her for being so young and beautiful—as though it were a sin to have enjoyed the glories of the flesh, theirs having stayed so sterile—I wondered whether I ought not to wish for her a less terrible evil and, rather than the convent, a husband, even if he were a simpleton, and children, who might at least console her even if they were his offspring as well. Oh, heaven! This thought lasted only a moment: I couldn’t continue to think this way, aspiring to heights that were at odds with my every fibre! It would have been hypocritical of me to hold such a sublime position for more than a quarter of a minute—to wish
her other children than mine. Such thoughts only made my wound more painful.

I don’t know how many hours I spent beating my head against a wall of despair, at times stretched out on my stomach on my bed, my head in my arms, at other times pacing back and forth in my tiny chamber, oblivious to the setting sun, so great was the darkness in my heart, casting glances out of my window at the Cimetière des Innocents, as if I aspired, in the bloom of my youth, to the stench of this annihilation.

There was a knock at the door. I staggered over to open it. It was my beautiful brother, Samson, who hugged me to him, having learnt from Fogacer, while looking for me to go to dinner with him, that I’d found my Angelina only to lose her. Gertrude du Luc, following him into the room, asked why I was crying, so I sat down, and in a dull, lifeless voice recounted what had happened in a most jumbled and incoherent way. Seeing me so deep in melancholy, Samson could not keep from shedding his own tears and Gertrude added hers as well. She slipped down before me on her knees and, taking my hands in hers, tried to console me, as she would have done a child, with a tenderness so sweet and feminine that I was surprised to see such compassion after her many excesses had led me to doubt she was capable of such feeling. I was thus distracted from my grief by a sense of the injustice that I’d done her, and in the blink of an eye I regained the esteem for her that I’d lost when she betrayed Samson with Cossolat. She immediately guessed this change of heart from my expression, and I could sense her happiness that this dark cloud had finally been swept away. I understood that I must henceforth embrace her as a true friend, free of any of the resentment caused by her troubles (which she couldn’t help) or by the very seductive way she treated every man she met—even her brother (as she was wont to call me). And I now believed that she was indeed my sister, absent of any
hypocrisy or ulterior motives, seeing how sincerely and affectionately she expressed her pity at my present sadness.

There was another knock on the door and, with Miroul at his heels, Fogacer came in. Seeing Samson by my side and Gertrude at my feet, he smiled his slow, sinuous smile and, sitting down on my left, said, “
Mi fili
, anyone who seeks to avoid suffering should never get involved with another, and should shun, like the serpent in the apple tree, this passionate appetite for another person that is called love. This is what the wise men teach us from the pulpit. But, alas, anyone who loves not women loves men, and anyone who loves neither one loves himself and spends his evenings totting up his sins and indulgences, subtracting the second from the first and trying to calculate if he’ll make it into Paradise.
Mi fili
, don’t trust this sort of fellow. If he’s so self-absorbed and so pettily sweet to himself, he can’t help being hard on other people.
Crede mihi experto Roberto
:
*
’tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

“Ah, Fogacer,” I moaned, “no doubt you’re right, but this is little comfort to me!”

“Well,” replied Fogacer raising his eyebrow, “that’s because I used the word ‘lost’, which is abhorrent to lovers. But have you really lost her? Miroul thinks otherwise.”

“What?” I gasped, sitting up. “What do you know that I don’t… and how did you discover it?”

“Shall I tell you, Monsieur?” he temporized.

“’Sblood!” I cried. “The impertinence! He sees me in the throes of misery and dares to tease me!”

“There, there, Monsieur,” smiled Miroul, his brown eye twinkling, “I’m not so impertinent as to fail to serve my master. Will you have the patience to hear me out?”

“Good God!” I shouted, now really angry. “Have patience? When have I ever lacked patience with you?”

“Why, every day, my master, unlike your ‘impertinent’ valet!”

“Well, then, Miroul,” I conceded, “I withdraw the word ‘impertinent’ if it upsets you.”

“Monsieur,” countered Miroul, half in jest and half serious, “I thank you. So here is my story without any further delay. Are you listening?”

“I’m all ears, dammit! Do I have to keep repeating it?”

“Monsieur, when I saw that great knave of a major-domo come back to see you with such a long face after having spoken with his master, I doubted seriously that there was any chance he’d let you see our young mistress; so, leaving our horses with Fogacer, I walked very boldly and nonchalantly up to the front door and leant against the door frame where I could watch the servants going back and forth bringing cases to the coach, and I began trimming my nails with a pair of little scissors as if I were a hundred leagues from there. Of course they looked at me very haughtily and I returned their looks with utter disdain. Finally, the major-domo, coming over to me, snarled, ‘What are you doing here, knave?’

“‘Monsieur,’ I replied, admiring my nails, ‘the first time anyone calls me a knave, nothing happens, since I am, by nature, very benign. But the second time, my sword leaps from its sheath, and this sword,’ I said, suddenly raising my voice, ‘should not be a stranger to you people from Barbentane, since it, along with those of my master and the monks from the abbey, saved your master and his household from being massacred. But given the way they’re treating Monsieur de Siorac in there, I believe that this good deed seems to have slipped from everyone’s memory here!’

“‘Monsieur,’ whined the major-domo in a very aggrieved voice, looking somewhat ashamed, ‘I’m only obeying orders.’

“‘From which I must conclude,’ I rejoined, ‘that given how coldly he was received, my master will not ever be able to see the ladies whom he saved from rape and death.’

“‘Monsieur, I fear ’tis true,’ replied the major-domo in an embarrassed voice; and, making a little bow, he left me standing there.

“I’d won the day, since this rascal was not without some shred of conscience and dared not confront me. And so when the Montcalm ladies came out to take their places in the coach—”

“What! You saw them?” I cried.

“And spoke to them,” Miroul laughed, “while Monsieur de Montcalm was inside amusing you.”

“And it’s only now you’re telling me this!”

“Monsieur, you’ve told me a hundred times never to bother you when you’re deep in thought.”

“Ah, Miroul, what patience…”

“Anyway, I saw them and immediately, stepping up in front of them, I made a series of deep bows as I backed up all the way to the coach, so that finally Madame Angelina cried, ‘But it’s Miroul! Where is your master, Miroul?’

“‘Inside, Madame,’ I answered, bowing again, ‘with Monsieur de Montcalm, but given his cold greeting, I doubt he will allow my master to greet you.’

“‘Mother!’ cried our young lady, her beautiful black eyes flashing such fire and brimstone in their anger that it was marvellous to behold. ‘So that’s what all the whispering was about when you were preparing our departure and the great hurry with which we left the house. This is beyond shame! We are fleeing the presence of the very man who saved us!’

“‘Picot!’ hissed Madame de Montcalm to her valet. ‘Open the door! In you get, my daughter!’

“‘Madame my mother,’ answered Angelina, making a small bow,
but her voice and look full of fury, ‘I am your servant. Miroul,’ she continued, turning to me, ‘be so kind as to tell your master that I want no part in the ingratitude that he’s been shown, and as for me, my feelings have not changed.’

“‘Daughter!’ cried Madame de Montcalm with a severity that seemed forced and feigned. ‘What are you doing? You are betrothed to Monsieur de La Condomine!’

“‘I owe nothing to that gentleman,’ countered Madame Angelina, her foot on the coach’s step. And pulling herself up to her full height with all the pride she possessed, she proclaimed, ‘He will have nothing from me, neither my hand, nor a word, nor even the grace of a single look from Paris to Barbentane.’

“So saying, and boiling with her unleashed anger, she threw herself into the coach, but, her hem having caught in the door latch, she pulled it towards her with such fury that she put a three-inch rip in her petticoat.

“‘Look what you’ve done!’ cried Madame de Montcalm. ‘You’ve ruined your dress!’

“‘I wish I’d destroyed it completely,’ cried Angelina, fixing her mother with a look of rage, her eyes blazing. ‘And along with it this entire coach that I might be spared making the trip with you-know-who!’

“‘Ah, Madame!’ gasped Madame de Montcalm. ‘Now you’ve gone too far! Your father will send you off to the convent!’

“‘I can’t wait!’ cried Angelina. ‘And there I’ll starve to death, far from some people I could name whose ingratitude I abhor.’

“‘My daughter!’ screamed Madame de Montcalm.

“But, throwing herself into the coach (while pulling her skirts to her to avoid catching them on the latch), she disappeared from view as Picot, the valet, dropped the window curtains behind her, and if the dispute continued inside the vehicle, as I suspect it did, I heard nothing more. I saddled my horse and remained stationed there
quietly until I saw you emerge from the house and struggle with the rascal in the escort who attempted to trample you with his horse. I unsheathed immediately, and had at him, and what the flat side of your blade had so well begun, I finished, putting half an inch of steel into the horse’s crupper and sending it galloping off to the moon.

“And that’s my story,” Miroul concluded quite simply. But with his mismatching eyes lowered with an air of immoderate modesty, he added, “But as for the pertinence or impertinence of my story, I cannot judge.”

“Ah, Miroul!” I cried, leaping from my couch, half-laughing, half-weeping, and giving him an enormous hug. “You’re the most pertinent of valets, the most well informed, and the best teaser too, and you have comforted me marvellously!”

“But my brother,” objected Samson, his blue eyes askance and full of tears, “will Madame Angelina let herself die of hunger? It would be a great sin against our Creator!”

“Don’t worry.” soothed Miroul. “Who threatens to do it, never does. Madame our mistress loves life much too well. It’s a ruse of war to make her father suffer and give in, that’s all.”

Yet another knock was heard at the door, and into my little room, which was already as full as an egg, squeezed Giacomi, very surprised to discover us all gathered there, some in tears, others full of laughter and all in each other’s arms. Dame Gertrude, seeing me rise from my ashes, was busy wiping away Samson’s tears and couldn’t help but add to the confusion with the immensity of her hoop skirt, which easily took up as much space as three of Fogacer. This last I introduced to Giacomi, admiring the harmony of their physical presences—they were the same height, with long legs and interminable arms; but their faces differed entirely: the doctor’s so Luciferian, the
maestro
’s so joyous. They exchanged a quick and lively look—from the one of medical attentiveness and from the other of a very Italian finesse—each
judging and gauging the other, and immediately accepting him for what he was—a very rare thing in this zealous century.

“My good friends!” I cried. “This business has so dried me out and famished me, and I cannot doubt that you, too, suffer from a very strident hunger, as late as it is! Will you all join me for a good repast at Guillaume Gautier’s place?”

“Well,” said Gertrude, rising from the couch where she’d been comforting Samson, her hoop skirts propelling us all towards the edges of the chamber, “I have to confess that I’m not alone. While passing through Montpellier on my return from Rome, where I’d gone to seek indulgences for my many sins” (and here she sighed and batted her eyelashes) “and where my own chambermaid abandoned me to take up service with a rich and luxury-loving bishop, I learnt that a famous doctor had just died—that is, in Montpellier—leaving his beautiful young servant without employment. I’d heard very good things about her and went to see her immediately…”