The Brethren (28 page)

Guise’s harangue completed, the queen mother lavished on his officers a bevy of smiles, affectionate thanks and expressions of eternal gratitude. But she breathed a deep sigh of relief when Guise and his glorious soldiers had finally retired. She liked war little enough and ambitious generals even less. It was all too evident that Guise had grown too powerful and that, all told, the throne’s sole support was shaking the throne a good deal more than he was sustaining it. As for the story of the exploits at Dreux, it stuck in her craw. The Florentine preferred to warfare her own particular brands of diplomacy: negotiation, royal marriage and political assassination.

Our friend, cousin and ally, François de Caumont, elder brother of Geoffroy the abbot, was present with the other courtiers at this harangue, as I later learnt from his servants. He had come to the court to complain about Montluc, who had seized his chateau at Milandes, had ransacked his brother’s abbey and had devastated the fields of his brother-in-law, the Baron de Biron. The moment for such a complaint was clearly ill chosen, Guise being so popular. As the queen mother refused an audience since Guise was her guest, the eldest Caumont had the strange idea of addressing himself directly to God rather than his saints, and requested an audience with the duc himself. It was like putting his head in the lion’s mouth.

Guise granted the audience, surrounded by his men, and with a royal and cold demeanour listened in silence as François de Caumont reviewed his grievances against Montluc. After which, raising his voice so all could hear, Guise said: “I am astonished you should demand justice from me. Your entire activity in your province accuses and condemns you. Admittedly, you have not openly raised your sword against the king, but you have aided and abetted the Huguenot rebellion. You have given shelter to the rebels in your houses and from them many blows have been directed against our people. Monsieur de Charry is witness to this, as are Hautefort and many other Catholic lords of your province. And so the only justice that could be meted out to you would be the very judgement you have demanded for Montluc, who is a good a faithful soldier and who has shed rivers of blood in the service of his king.”

“Rivers of blood!” agreed François de Caumont. “Ah, to be sure, Your Grace, you speak the truth.”

“Indeed, I do!” said Guise, rising angrily. “Montluc has shed more rivers of blood in the service of his king that you have dripped droplets from your sword and your three brothers’ swords. And so
Montluc deserves great credit, and you very little. Heed my words well, Caumont, and change your ways while there is still time.”

François de Caumont withdrew, fiercely embittered to be so humiliated in public. If he had been more prudent, he would have fled the court with all possible haste for his native Périgord. But Milandes lay heavy on his heart and he could not let go of the matter. Hearing that the duc had, later that evening, expressed regret for the severity he had shown Caumont, and since the duc was supposed to leave Blois the next morning to head for Orleans, which he intended to take from the Huguenots, Caumont offered to ride part of the way with him, and, in fact, the duc exchanged pleasantries with him as they rode stirrup to stirrup. After which, Caumont took his leave of the duc and returned to Blois. Scarcely had he gone a quarter of a league, however, before he met up with Edme de Hautefort, surrounded by a troop of captains, who angrily reproached him for allowing shots to be fired from his houses on Catholic partisans during the troubles in Périgueux. Caumont never had time to reply, for Hautefort drew his sword and, rushing at him, struck him a mortal blow on the head. This murder took place on 3rd or 4th February 1563, I’m not able to pinpoint it more precisely. And so great was the feeling against the Huguenots that his crime went unpunished and virtually unnoticed. This was, in Guise’s own terms, but a drop of blood in the rivers that were yet to flow, for, on 5th February, Guise laid siege to Orleans.

He had already taken the outlying towns of Portereau and Tourelles. From the beginning of the siege, he would return every night to his lodgings at Saint-Mesmin, by means of a little boat which ferried him, his valet and their horses across the river. Once on the other side, they remounted and rode along the edge of a small patch of woods. On the 13th, the eve of Guise’s planned assault on Orleans, a Huguenot fanatic, Poltrot de Méré, hidden in this thicket,
fired three shots into the broad back of this man who had but two weeks previously harangued the queen mother. As he was wearing no cuirass, the bullets penetrated his right shoulder and Guise pitched forward in his saddle, but did not fall, saying, “I deserved this, but I don’t think it’s anything serious.”

He died six days later. As for Poltrot de Méré, his shot fired, he galloped all night, but he lost his way and ended up at daybreak back at the scene of the crime and was immediately taken. Under torture, he confessed that Soubise and d’Aubeterre had put him up to it. He also named Admiral de Coligny, but retracted much of this and garbled his story terribly, right up until the time they drew and quartered him.

It was in vain that Coligny vehemently denied having had a hand in the murder and asked the queen mother to allow him to confront his accuser before the man was dispatched. The queen would hear none of it, and doubtless had her reasons. Nine years later, when she gave the order for Coligny’s assassination, she made it appear as though the murder was attributable to the Guise family. Might we not imagine that she had a hand in the elimination of Guise and was happy to see that Coligny was accused of the murder?

“We cannot deny,” wrote Coligny on learning the death of Guise, “the evident miracles of God,” a sentence that the Florentine, who was not so naive, would never have pronounced. But the miracle of this death, whether she had a hand in it or not, changed her life, strengthened her power and solidified the throne of her son.

Guise was scarcely cold in his tomb before the queen mother began concessions to the Protestants. She ordered Montluc to desist from his devastation of Biron’s lands and to return Milandes to the Caumont family. She played at compromise and at peace, but always in such a way as to pull as many chestnuts from the fire as possible for her own and her son’s power. She was clever enough to open negotiations between the camps where Montmorency and Condé
were held captive by the Huguenots and Catholics respectively. Each man desired his liberty of course, but the prince being the younger, more hot-blooded and impatient of the two (especially where women were concerned) conceded more than his party would have wanted.

The Edict of Amboise, which Montmorency signed in March 1563, abandoned some of the more liberal positions of the Edict of January, for it restricted the liberty of the Protestant cult to the houses of the lords “with their families and subjects” and for the reformed commoners it reduced the practice of their Church to one village in each district. Calvin severely criticized the vanity of this nobleman, who, provided that the members of his own caste were free to pray as they liked, cared little about the great mass of people in their villages on the land.

My father and Sauveterre (like all Huguenots of conscience) shared Calvin’s indignation, but did not feel free to protest since they had not fought for their side. Of course, they were among those who benefitted “with their families and subjects” from the strictures of the Edict. What’s more, the peace that resulted was immensely profitable to them, as I shall recount hereafter.

T
HE EDICT
of Amboise signed, the Protestants were no longer outlaws, since their existence and their rights were recognized by the treaty. This meant that we could again venture into our villages and that my father could go to Sarlat. Which he did, after having sent Diane de Fontenac back to her chateau all healed and vigorous again. He might have returned her thence a month earlier, but in the troubled times we had just lived through, and trusting Fontenac like a viper, he was happy enough to have this pawn at Mespech which protected him from any treason by our good neighbour.

Despite the fact that during her stay with us she never left the first floor of the gatehouse and none of us, save my father, ever saw her except at a distance, sitting in her window wrapped in her white furs and watching us with her green eyes, Diane’s departure left us all feeling extraordinarily empty, as if a beloved poem had been for ever lost from memory. I won’t elaborate on the woes of François, who did his best to hide his melancholy, which the Brethren did not even consent to notice.

Fontenac sent the Baron de Mespech a gracious letter of thanks with a present of 500 écus and a Spanish jennet. My father returned the money, but put the letter carefully away in safe keeping and kept the horse. It was a black pony, small enough in stature, but full of fire. I got to mount her for the first time on the day the Edict was proclaimed and my father rode to Sarlat on business, accompanied
by Cockeyed Marsal, Faujanet, the Siorac brothers and his three rascals, all three outfitted with pistols in our saddle holsters and unsheathed swords hanging, tied to our right wrists. My father was less fearful of an ambush than of a popular demonstration at Sarlat, where the priests, even less happy with the Edict of Amboise than the Protestants, disgorged their hatred against us at Mass on every one of God’s Sundays with a thousand insults.

However, the police lieutenant, Guillaume de La Porte, who had been notified of our coming, was waiting for my father at the la Lendrevie gate. He asked us to sheathe our swords, which we did, and, riding in front, stirrup to stirrup with my father, smiling and conversing all the while, he kept his eyes on the upper windows of the houses we passed, and crossed the entire town with us as far as the la Rigaudie gate. From there, closely watched by all the passers-by and many gawkers at their windows, the little troop turned on its heels and headed back towards the centre of town, passing in front of the episcopal mansion (where La Porte crossed himself and my father doffed his cap out of respect), arriving at length at the town hall, where my father was received on the steps by Monsieur de Salis, the lieutenant general of the Périgord region, and by the two consuls. All of this was accomplished without the least tumult or shouting, or hostilities of any kind from the populace, other than two or three nasty looks from the windows of some diehards who hated us purely out of religious zeal rather than out of any personal resentment.

In short, nothing happened and I was bitterly disappointed, for I was twelve years old and it was the first time I’d worn a gentlemen’s sword, and though it was but a short sword I’d got a swollen head, and parading around on my Spanish jennet I thought I was invincible. Having dismounted and handed our horses over to our soldiers, we followed close behind my father, I on his right and Samson on his
left. I walked along haughtily, my hand negligently draped over my sword hilt, looking to all sides with a hectoring air. At the end of the morning, my father paid his customary visit to Franchou, giving her a little present and speaking to her so long in private that I thought he would never leave off giving her kisses on both cheeks or tapping her comely arms, but at last he took his leave.

Although she was now Huguenot and married, neither le Breuil nor Mespech had altogether accepted Sarrazine and we had to keep working on getting the women to take her into their confidence given how scandalously different her eyes, her hair and especially her skin colour were. The first to take a clear position in her defence was Cabusse, because Cathau had refused her neighbourly duties, arguing that Sarrazine wasn’t like other women.

“And how is she so unlike the others?” asked Cabusse in a terrible voice and pulling fiercely on his moustache. “Hasn’t she got two tits like you and a hole to receive the male, and a belly to carry a wee babe? Maybe,” he added with his usual Gascon tact, “she hasn’t got your pretty looks, Cathau, and your housekeeping skills, but if my friend Jonas likes her as she is, why then the difference is only a matter of fur, like you see between dogs, some black, others brown or spotted and still others white as snow. It’s not by the fur you can tell a good animal, but by its breeding.” At bedtime, between la Maligou and Barberine, it was another story altogether. Since Isabelle’s death, my father happily lingered among his servants at table of an evening rather than going right away to join Sauveterre in his library, where there was a warmer fire. But it was not that kind of warmth my father craved, but the ease and gaiety of his soldiers and the presence of women, of Barberine most of all. With her two kids, one clinging to her skirts and the other in its chestnut cradle on the floor beside her, which she rocked with her foot from time to time, she eventually suckled each one, which delighted us all,
and my father more than anyone, he whose head was so close to his heart and his heart to his feelings. Moreover, those two, Annet and Jacquou, should have been suckled along with the two stillborn sons of Isabelle’s, the second costing her her life. And as I have said, my father’s wish was that they be raised at the chateau, not, of course, like my half-brother Samson, but rather like our cousins Siorac, somewhere between servant and relative. It was not exactly a blood brotherhood, but a milk brotherhood that joined us all together. Annet had, in fact, been the godson of Isabelle de Siorac. These kids were not covered with dirt like the urchins in our villages, with their heads full of lice, and, in the summer, flies in their eyes. They were, on the contrary, pink and chubby, their hair clean, given my father’s insistence on cleanliness; so meticulous was he that he interrupted dinner to tell Faujanet at table, “Good fellow, your feet stink. Go wash them at the pump.”

Despite the rocking Barberine kept up on Jacquou’s cradle during the evening, he began to wail to burst your eardrums, which set Annet to crying in turn, which earned him boxed ears from his mother, for he’d had a good soup for dinner with goat cheese from Jonas, apple compote and even a bit of meat, which he had a taste for whether hungry or not. Leaning over, Barberine placed Jacquou in her lap, showering him with such tender cooings and murmurings that I nearly melted with envy. The nursling, quieted by these sweet murmurs, was passed to little Hélix, who carried on this lullaby as best she could while Barberine undid the laces of her bodice. This done, her eyes modestly lowered given the many men seated around her, yet for all that, with a certain air of pomp and pride, for she was quite conscious that she was plying her trade, and plying it well, Barberine gave her nurslings good plate and good soup, and to her onlookers a feast for the eyes. As always, her laces were knotted and the knots would not fit through the eyelets so she untied them one
by one, without haste, with her large round fingers, thus prolonging our wait. “Barberine,” said my father (but he said it every night), “you must remind me to bring you a new lace from Sarlat.”

“Oh, this one does well enough, and they’re so expensive,” replied Barberine, untying the last knot. And this said, she drew out from her blouse with a firm hand and an easy gesture first her right and then her left breast, both so round and large and white that a great silence fell over the room so that all you could hear was the tiniest crackle of the fire and the gluttonous sucking of the two hungries.

Barberine got great relief from these double doses of her inexhaustible supply of milk, whose pressure between feedings caused her a thousand deaths, which is why Annet, now going on four, was still invited to these banquets, despite the inconvenience. “Ouch! Ouch!” moaned Barberine, both hands occupied with her charges. “Hélix, spank this little cheater, he’s biting me.” Hélix applied a firm hand to Annet’s little bottom, who let off sucking for a moment to raise a howl, but quickly snapped up the teat again, this time careful not to bite. There was no doubt a bit of melancholy in my father’s eye as he watched these two little rascals, so handsome and pink and strong, and Annet already a mischievous little tyke with his hands into everything just the way you’d expect, but not the two sons he had lost, who would be just their ages, with Isabelle still alive instead of enduring the tortures of hell. It is certain that damnation and salvation are in the hands of the Lord, and He alone judges our lives in His infinite wisdom, but for those who rejected Purgatory as we did, as but a detestable addition to God’s Word, it was all but intolerable to imagine a beloved being plunged after death into eternal torment.

If my father was preoccupied with this thought—and he often was, since he made note of it in the
Book of Reason
—he must have quickly
chased it away in order to enjoy the pleasures of the moment, for his eye began to twinkle as he listened to the conversation between la Maligou and Barberine that had been carried on in whispers all evening, but which, in the silence engendered by the suckling, caught everyone’s ears.

“And what’s more,” Barberine was saying in that serene voice she got when she was suckling, “she’s ugly enough to freeze the blood in your veins.”

“Ah, and sure you’re right there!” agreed la Maligou.

“And just who is so ugly?” interjected Jean de Siorac, raising an eyebrow.

“Sarrazine,” replied Barberine, not without some embarrassment at being overheard.

“Sarrazine! Ugly!” laughed my father. “My poor Barberine, you’re a pretty bad judge of women’s beauty! You know that to be beautiful, a woman must have three features, like a horse: a good chest, good haunches and a beautiful mane. Now Sarrazine has these in abundance, the first two high and firm given her slender body, and as for her mane, in length, in thickness and in body, it’s as good as the pony’s that Fontenac sent me, whose mane is so beautiful when it’s blowing in the wind.”

“With all due respect, My Lord,” said la Maligou, “there’s the problem of the colour of her skin.”

My father made a large gesture with his right hand. “The colour of her skin has nothing to do with it, my poor woman! Your Little Sissy has skin almost as dark as Sarrazine’s, and she’s still a pretty little wench who will break a few hearts.”

At this, Little Sissy lowered her eyes, and little Hélix blushed with spite, while puffing out her chest to attract my father’s notice.

“But that’s because she’s a Gypsy!” said la Maligou, looking at Little Sissy proudly.

“She’s no more Gypsy than you are,” my father laughed uproariously. “But on that subject,” he added with a knowing air, “we’ll hear no more tonight.”

La Maligou broke the brief silence that followed this remark with a bitter reflection, as if to take her revenge on Sarrazine for the affront she had just received: “It’s not so much that Sarrazine is ugly, My Lord, it’s that she’s the Devil’s own daughter and a succubus.”

“And how do you know this, Maligou?” asked my father frowning. “Did the Lord whisper it in your ear?”

“No, but there’s proof enough, My Lord! First, Sarrazine came out of nowhere four years ago. You got her a place in la Volperie, and after three years she changes herself into a wounded she-wolf and gets taken in by Jonas in his cave.”

“Ah yes, but she continued to work as a servant at la Volperie,” countered my father, laughing. “Coulondre Iron-arm saw her there every week when he did his hauling there.”

“She made herself double.”

“Ah, really? How easy it all is! And which paw did the wolf break, Pierre? You saw her.”

“The right rear one,” I said, happy to play a role in this trial.

“And Sarrazine, at la Volperie, had her right leg broken?”

“Not in the least, My Lord,” answered Coulondre. “She walked just like you and me.”

“The Devil can do anything,” said la Maligou.

“If this is true, then he’s as powerful as God,” said my father, changing his tone and immediately frowning angrily.

“Oh no! Oh no!” answered la Maligou, crossing herself, as pale and terrified as if the executioner were already fanning the flames around her. “If it please you to remember, My Lord, that I’m only a poor ignorant woman, and don’t know the why and wherefore of things, and I can keep my peace if you think I’ve said too much.”

“You haven’t said enough, Maligou,” replied my father, with his sternest expression. “I want the rest of your proofs.”

“Oh they’re not lacking, My Lord!” said la Maligou, regaining her colour a bit. “First of all, the she-wolf cast a spell on Jonas in his cave so that he’d fall in love with her and want her to change into a woman.”

“That’s foolishness,” said my father.

But whether it was foolishness or not, I for one, who had heard Jonas, wasn’t so sure. But I held my tongue, not wanting to add to the stonecutter’s problems.

“And it was done!” cried la Maligou triumphantly. “The wolf was transformed into Sarrazine, and she married Jonas.”

“If I understand this tissue of incredible silliness correctly,” said my father, “the wolf, after changing herself into Sarrazine, continued nonetheless to be wolf, since wolf and woman lived together two full months on rather bad terms in Jonas’s cave.”

“Yes, but one day the wolf disappeared.”

“Of course she disappeared, since she ended up eating one of Jonas’s goats and fearing her master’s anger ran away. And that’s what you should do too, Maligou,” added my father in a thunderous voice with glowering looks. “I’m telling you for the last time that if you have the misfortune to pursue such spiteful gossip in our villages, I’ll send you away from Mespech and never set eyes on you again. Meanwhile, no one here, man or woman, who values my friendship, shall say or suffer to be said in their presence any of these wicked and damnable lies about Jonas and his wife, but shall hold them both, man and wife, as I do, in particular esteem. And as for you, Maligou, since you keep secrets with the Devil, ask him if he has made a double of you as well, so that while you tend our stove, he has made you a fat little shiny mouse in my loft who sometimes chews on papers I keep there that I don’t need any more.”