Heretic Dawn (8 page)

The crowd was so dense in the main dining room of the Three Kings and everyone so busy gorging themselves at my expense—while our hostess went from one person to the next, her eyes shining as she calculated how much their sharp teeth and dry throats would come to on her slate, which I’d have to settle tomorrow—that no one noticed my brief absence. When I caught sight of my beloved Samson, with Miroul at his side, I noticed that he was deep in conversation with a well-proportioned lass wearing a black mask that completely covered her face, but whom I nevertheless immediately identified thanks to a particular trait, which I’ll explain. She only appeared to be a lady
for, despite her rich attire, she was but a commoner, as her Provençal dialect and Cévennes accent made all to evident. She now lived discreetly in comfortable profligacy, very highly esteemed by a few wealthy bourgeois, a handsome canon of Notre-Dame des Tables and Captain Cossolat, for among her other qualities (such as an expertise in frolicking and lewd games) she was faithful in her friendships, more of a good girl than an angel, although her sex, unlike that of angels, was absolutely indubitable.

Making my way through the crowds, I approached her and whispered in her ear, “Ah, my good Thomassine, here you are! If you weren’t wearing a mask, I’d give you a kiss!”

“What!” she gasped. “You recognized me?”

“Of course!”

“But how?”

“By your figure! There’s not a more shapely or fetching body in all of Provence!”

“You rascal!” she laughed. “You have such a way with words! And not just with the ladies, it seems, but also with these bigwig doctors!”

“My dear Thomassine, what on earth were you doing at my boring
triduanes
?”

“By m’faith! What gibberish! Was that French you were speaking?”

“No, it was Latin.”

“Oh, mercy! What strange twaddle! I couldn’t understand a word of it! But I could easily see that you’re as silver-tongued as they come and there wasn’t one among those berobed bigwigs that could get the better of you!”

I took leave of her to fetch a goblet of wine and a Bigorre sausage, and holding the latter between my thumb and my index finger as Barberine had taught me—rather than, as that pig the Baron de Caudebec did, in my fist—I used my left hand to fill my goblet, and was returning to Thomassine’s side when I heard a
great commotion over by the door, and headed that way. There I beheld Captain Cossolat struggling with a tall, thin, dark-haired devil, quite badly dressed in a ragged doublet but wearing at his side both sword and dagger. Cossolat was attempting to arrest this fellow because he was not a doctor, a student or a known citizen of the town, and so he’d collared him and was accusing him of having come in to gorge himself at my expense and, who knows, pick a few pockets.

“Monthieur,” lisped this great spindleshanks with an offended air, “how dare you lay a hand on me! I am a perthon of quality. My name is Giacomi and I’m a mathter-at-armth.”

“A likely fable!” cried Cossolat. “There’s not a master-at-arms in Montpellier that I haven’t met, since arms are my profession! Tell me, knave, who knows you here?”

“I do!” I replied, stepping forward, since I liked this fellow’s demeanour and his lisp, which reminded me of my beloved Samson.

“What, Pierre? You know this rascal?”

“I do!” I lied, my cheeks swelling with this happy falsehood. “His name is Giacomi, and I invited him here.”

“I’ve only been here three days,” said our guest quickly, “which is why the captain here hadn’t met me yet.”

“Pierre,” growled Cossolat, releasing him, but looking askance at me, “do you really answer for this fellow?”

“Indeed I do,” I laughed, “as much as I answer for myself!”

At this, Cossolat, who was a full head shorter than Giacomi, but very stocky, with broad shoulders and well-muscled arms, looked the man up and down with a most unfriendly air and said, “Italian, remember this well: I don’t like it when a fellow of your aspect walks around my town wearing a sword and dagger when he’s not got a sol in his purse.” Having said which, he turned on his heels and marched off stiffly, clearly irritated.

“Monsieur doctor,” said Giacomi greeting me, “what thanks and good wishes I owe—”

“Bah,” I said, interrupting him, “forget it! It’s nothing. I simply didn’t want you to be locked up for stealing a sausage on the day I received my promotion.”

“Especially, honoured doctor,” he replied squinting with such a piteous and dainty air at the sausage I was holding in my right hand, “since I haven’t eaten anything yet.”

At this, I burst out laughing.

“Well then, eat, my friend!” I said, handing him goblet and sausage. “Eat your fill and drink up. It’s not going to empty my wallet on a day like this!” And shoving him into the little room that Madame de Joyeuse and Aglaé had just vacated, I had our hostess feed him his fill and promised him I’d come back to talk to him as soon as my guests had left.

Scarcely, however, had I entered the grand hall before one of the pretty chambermaids who had been so pawed over during my
triduanes
approached me with a mysterious smile and told me that there was a masked and veiled “woman of noble bearing” asking for me at the entrance to the inn.

I hurried out and found a tall, very well-dressed and bejewelled woman wearing a mask, and, over the mask, a black lace veil, which she removed when she saw me, revealing a head of strawberry-blonde hair. She was none other than Dame Gertrude du Luc.

“Ah, Madame! You, here! So far from your beloved Normandy! How happy Samson will be to see you!”

“And what about you, my brother,” cooed Dame Gertrude, in her Norman French, “aren’t you happy as well?”

“But of course, Madame,” I answered, already impatient with her coquetry and suddenly remembering her affair with Cossolat; and, without missing a beat, but with a sudden coldness, I went on: “…if indeed you are as faithful to him as he is to you.”

“What? Could you doubt it?” cried the little hypocrite, happy that her mask could hide her shame, if shame she could feel. “But my brother,” she continued, “aren’t you surprised to see me here?”

“Of course!”

“I am,” she said placing her hand on my arm so that I could see the large ring on her gloved finger, “on a second pilgrimage to Rome, having derived such great spiritual profit from the first one.”

“Ah, Madame,” I replied with honeyed piety, “this is very edifying indeed, as long as you don’t use up all the indulgences you earned in the papal city just getting there.”

“You wicked Huguenot,” she hissed with feigned anger, “you’re making sport of me! Do you feel so little pity for the foibles of a poor papist?” And so saying, she threw her arms around me and held me tightly, pressing the full length of her body against mine; and, I confess, she was so soft, so mellow, so undulating, that I felt my mouth suddenly turn dry and words fail me—though these certainly wouldn’t have been necessary if we’d followed the path down which this Circe was leading me. Nor could I withhold pity for her weaknesses when she was exposing my own with such art! What a lesson for me—and one that reminded me I should never judge my neighbour!

And yet I didn’t want to give in any further when I thought about my beloved Samson; so, taking Dame Gertrude by the shoulders and pushing her back from me, I whispered in her ear:

“Madame, this time I will serve you, but no Cossolat! Or I’ll lose my temper!”

Breathing very hard behind her mask, she remained as mute as a carp, giving sufficient proof of her bewitching power to retreat, if indeed that was what she was doing, for I clearly understood, as I watched her pant, that this Norman ogress had appetite enough to cast the three of us together into the furnace of her desire—Samson, Cossolat and me—and the Devil knows who else.

“My brother,” she said in a dying voice, as if she were out of breath, “I know Thomassine is here—and Samson. Go, I beg you, and summon them. I’ve got a carriage waiting outside the door to take them to the needle shop where I hope the good Thomassine will give me a room, but please! Hurry! I can’t wait any longer! I feel like I’m on fire!”

Oh Lord! The power of a woman! What a hold it has on us! How men grovel before it—men who in their pride and pomp are stupid enough to think they control everything! The minx had so overwhelmed, troubled and mollified me that I hurried to obey her, crazed as I was! But not as crazed as Samson, who almost fainted when he beheld her suddenly standing there, lifting her mask to reveal her irresistible smile.

In a trice, he was hers, and he stepped, as if tied hand and foot, into her carriage, throwing his Huguenot conscience to the winds, while at his side Thomassine was secretly lamenting that such a great love was planted in such risky terrain. I remained standing there in the doorway of the inn, feeling sorry for Samson’s simplicity, at the same time thinking—and knowing exactly why I was having such a thought—how much I would have enjoyed being in his place.

When I went back into the inn, I was congratulated on all sides for the superb way in which I’d defended myself on my
triduanes
: compliments that I listened to politely and happily enough, and yet my mind was elsewhere, as if in a fog of that melancholy that often follows our greatest joys and successes. To tell the truth, I was also feeling the immense fatigue that three days of aggressive disputations had produced, and, since night had long since fallen and one by one my guests were taking their leave, my responses became less and less effusive. The only exception was d’Assas, whom I held back for last in order to express my great thanks. Ah, what a good man he was! And so fat! And so lively! And so benign!

“Pierre,” he said as he embraced me warmly (as much as he was able, for his great paunch prevented him from hugging me), “here you are, a doctor at the tender age of twenty-one. Now that you have your plumage, you must leave the nest! You know how much I shall miss your zeal for knowledge and your zest for life! Of all the students I’ve had in the last five years, you were the one I loved best and I would have given you anything—except,” he said with a wicked smile, “my chambermaid Zara and my Frontignan vineyard, both of which attracted you—if not the first, then most certainly the second. Now a word about medicine, Pierre. As you depart from the Royal College, you must also leave behind this scholarly rubbish: the contentious disputations, the pompous pedantries, the Latin and”—he smiled broadly—“even the Greek, which you haven’t learnt! All this silliness! This hollowness!
Crede mihi experto Roberto!
†
Three-quarters of what you were taught here isn’t worth a dead horse’s fart! Practise your dissections! There’s where the truth lies! Under the knife! Before your eyes! Under your fingers! And read only those teachers who have experience with cutting! Michael Servetus! The great Vesalius! Ambroise Paré! Throw away into the deepest dungeon the Pinarelles and Pennedepiés and all the pompous asses who worship Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen as if they were gods and daily exclaim:
Vetera extollimus recentium incuriosi
.”
‡
Just remember, Pierre, that he who speaks by the authority of the ancients offers only unprofitable dust. We Huguenots, who reject the authority of the Pope, popular superstitions, the saints and all the golden idols, must also be Huguenots in medicine! We must rediscover the naked truth of nature beneath all the age-old errors! An ass wearing a doctor’s bonnet is still an ass! Let it bray for its ancient oats! Let Pinarelle believe in his bifurcated uterus!
And let Pennedepié enjoy his nasty tricks! Pinarelle and Pennedepié! Pennedepié and Pinarelle! Pierre, my friend, remember these two ridiculous and senile pedants as the alpha and omega of ignorance. And don’t they just look the part?—as long and unhappy as two days in Lent! Oh, Pierre! The truth is naked and science is gay!”

Whereupon, choking down a sob, I thought, he embraced me warmly. I walked him to the door, where his cart was waiting, and as he leapt into it with an agility that I wouldn’t have expected of someone so portly, I watched him whip his horse into a lively trot, and was surprised to feel suddenly small and sombre, as though, somehow, he were taking with him my youthful years of study in Montpellier. And indeed, they had come to an end! The straw beaten, the grains in the sack, all that remained on the field was the stubble of harvests reaped. Certain it is that we must harvest food for the winter, but who doesn’t shed a tear to see the beautiful standing wheat fall before the scythe?

I returned to the great hall, where the tables were now piled with the remains of my repast. From the other side of the room, the hostess bustled over with a huge smile on her face to tell me that she’d present me with the bill the next morning. Hardly able to answer, my heart suddenly heavy, I called to Miroul, who was sitting on a stool chatting with one of the chambermaids. According to which side of his face he turned her way, he gazed at her either with his blue or with his brown eye, and under such an assault the lass was melting like butter in the sun, but then it was her job to melt, since the poor girl was but one of the commodities offered by the inn. I ordered Miroul to fetch me my sword, dagger and pistols—which I’d left at the inn that morning since it was forbidden to carry arms at the Royal College of Medicine—and while waiting for them I began to think about my large bed, when all of a sudden I remembered that I’d left Giacomi in the little room off the hall. And it was a very lucky thing, as we will see, that I didn’t forget him.

His feast devoured, the Italian was sleeping like a log, his elbows flat on the table and his cheek on his elbows, with the air of blessed felicity that you see on the faces of the chosen in stained-glass windows in papist churches. I tapped him on the shoulder.

“Ah, Monsieur doctor!” he stammered, blinking in the candlelight like a bat in the sun. “You’ve done wonders for me by filling my stomach! I dreamt I was in heaven!”

“Giacomi,” I replied gravely, but not with a frown, “so what are you? A pickpocket? A hired assassin?”

“Not a bit of it, Monthieur doctor!” he replied, raising his head and speaking with his Italian lisp. “I was, as I said, a master-at-arms in Genoa and well respected for my talents. But having killed in an honourable dual a gentleman who had provoked me, I had to flee my country to save my skin. And so hurriedly, that I left without any money.”