The Brethren (34 page)

“And isn’t it now Pierre’s? And do you think he wears it lightly?”

Hearing this, I knew I was saved. And, strange to say, as soon as I had this feeling, my conscience, which until then had raised no objections to my eavesdropping, suddenly pricked me sharply and I withdrew on tiptoe and went to find Samson in our tower room. I told him the whole story.

“What?” he gasped, eyes opening wide. “You eavesdropped?”

“Yes I did,” I said, pacing about the room and shrugging impatiently. “I had to! It was about me!”

But Samson seemed greatly troubled by this news, and realizing that he blamed me for it, I suddenly understood with secret pleasure that Samson was my Sauveterre. I went up to him, kissed him on both cheeks and said in a rough but cordial tone: “Go easy on me, brother!”

At this very instant, the real Sauveterre entered our tower room, dressed in black and wearing his high Huguenot ruff. He closed the door carefully behind him, and looked at me thoughtfully out of his black eyes, set so deep in their sockets that their very depth gave them a penetrating quality. “My nephew,” he said finally, “take off your sword. Your father would be unhappy to see you wearing it at your side. You forget that it is to be worn only outside our walls.”

I could have kissed him, I think, for having so eloquently tendered me the olive branch. But he was so ceremonious and correct, speaking French rather than Périgordian, that I didn’t dare. “My nephew,” he began anew, as if this conclusion to the whole matter were the most natural thing in the world, “as punishment for defying your father, you shall compose twenty Latin verses in which you present your deepest and most sincere apologies to the Baron de Mespech for having preferred the duty due to the deceased to that owed to a father.”

“I shall not fail to do so, my uncle,” I responded with immense relief, “and in the very terms you have prescribed, and which so faithfully render the truth of my dilemma.”

So saying, I bowed, and though his face showed scarcely any sign of it, I could tell that Sauveterre was satisfied both by my words and by my reverence.

“Must I also,” asked Samson piteously, his eyes betraying his fear, “compose twenty Latin verses?”

Sauveterre smiled. “For you, Samson, the baron will accept a note of apology.” He raised a finger. “Provided it’s written in French and in good French.”

“It shall be done,” sighed Samson.

“Take your time, my nephews,” said Sauveterre with a penetrating look in which we could detect a small glow of irony mixed with affection. “To help your composition along, you shall be locked in this room until tomorrow afternoon, and so as not to burden your reflection, you will be served bread and water only.”

Whereupon he made a parting nod, to which we each responded with a deep bow. And limping away, his powerful shoulders squared, his carriage straight as a board and his demeanour almost jaunty, he left and bolted the door behind him.

And so our quarantine was prolonged by forty-eight hours, and when finally we emerged from our tower room, our Latin and French excuses duly composed, our father proclaimed the peace and his pardon with an embrace. But a notable change had taken place at Mespech during our incarceration: Catherine was now installed in my mother’s rooms and Franchou, her chambermaid, slept in the adjoining cabinet—which also happened to adjoin my father’s room. If, as my father had protested to Sauveterre—and I’d heard it with my own ears—there was nothing “between this poor wench and himself”, he was putting temptation directly in his path. All the more so since Franchou was overcome with infinite gratitude for his having so gallantly saved her from the claws of death. Whenever he entered the great common room, she had eyes only for him, and, like a needle to a magnet, hurried to take up her position behind
him at table, rushing to fill his goblet almost before had he drained it—to the great displeasure of Barberine, who had always filled this office in the past.

I imagine that before the outbreak of the plague at Sarlat, Franchou must have awaited my father’s visits to the La Valade household with baited breath, if one is to judge by her trembling welcome: “Oh, My Lord, welcome! My Lord, I’m so happy so see you!”

“Good day, my friend, and how goes it?”

“Should I tell Madame you’re here?”

“No hurry, Franchou! I’ve a little present for you, a silver thimble so you won’t prick your fingers sewing.”

“Sweet Jesus! A thimble! Made of silver! My Lord, you’re so good to me!” And good he was, certainly, and familiar as well, since, to thank her for her gratitude, he always gave her a big kiss on her fresh cheeks, patting her round arms affectionately while she blushed deeply, all hot and bothered by his attentions.

I couldn’t argue with Uncle de Sauveterre about all this. It would have been better to place Franchou at la Volperie than in such convenient proximity, separated from the enemy by only a little door without even a bolt to secure it. For hers was visibly not a fortress, like Calais, that needed much assault, but rather one that would fall at the first sign of attack, the population running out to be sacked by the assailants.

While awaiting such an outcome, the rumours flew freely between kitchen and scullery, and our hens and chicks jealously cackled their discontent day in, day out, but never dared peck at Franchou directly, so naive, so stout and so well protected was she. Sauveterre, all sullen, never unclenched his teeth at table and never took his eyes off his plate. And, as in the days when he had to countenance my father’s many loans to Jehanne, the words “I pray for you, Jean” reappeared in the
Book of Reason
, soon followed by a brotherly exchange of
biblical quotations, some denouncing lust, others praising fecundity. In extremis, Sauveterre even fell back on poetry (though, to be sure, it was written by a king’s sister), and cited with the clearest of intentions these beautiful ascetic lines from Marguerite d’Angoulême:

To which my father replied by missing the point, in a most peremptory tone: “My body is not soft, nor am I fragile.” And, despairing of his cause, Sauveterre finally played his trump: “At your age, Jean! And at hers!” To which my father, but little troubled, responded with a Périgordian proverb: “What does it matter how old the ram if the ewe’s in heat?”

Franchou was the daughter of Jacques Pauvret, well named since he was a poor tenant farmer on our lands, who lived in a dilapidated farmhouse in the valley. Franchou had subsisted on parsimonious grain, few loaves of bread in the hutch, meagre flames in the hearth and rags for clothes. She had known more slaps than kisses, constant terror from wolves and bands of armed beggars and, at the first sign of drought, a gnawing famine that reduced them to eating acorns. Of course, like all the other poor girls in her village, she was told by Pincers to be a good girl and stay at home. How could she be blamed for having little nostalgia for her youth as she dreamily sewed at our table, her thumb crowned by the silver thimble my father had given her? The baron’s wench? What was so bad about that? Where was the shame? Little bastards who would eat their fill and perhaps, like Samson, end up with the glorious name of Siorac? Could she
be reproached for settling for a life with board, bed and fire behind great walls which protected her from roving bands, hunger and even sickness, since, during the great pestilence, Mespech had fallen back on its immense reserves, so that even when the plague came to assault our mighty defences, it couldn’t get in?

While, in his little kingdom, my father was wrestling with his conscience as to whether he should harvest this round, ripe and velvety peach, Catherine de’ Medici, far away in her Louvre, lusted after another fruit.

Le Havre remained in English hands. During the civil war, our leaders, Condé and Coligny, had given this beautiful city to Elizabeth of England, in exchange for subsidies arranged at the Hampton Court treaty, with the promise of exchanging it for Calais once peace had returned. But Condé, reconciled with Catherine after the Edict of Amboise, now blushed to have signed this disadvantageous treaty that would have amputated Calais from France again after she’d so dearly won it. “This little prince so very pretty, here a laugh and there a ditty”, had happily perjured himself, while Elizabeth fumed against the perfidious French who couldn’t keep their word, Huguenots and papists alike. To pour oil on this fire, Catherine sent Monsieur d’Alluye to the English queen, who boasted a great deal and was marvellously impertinent, refusing to give up Calais and even daring to demand the return of le Havre. “I shall keep le Havre,” sniffed Elizabeth haughtily “to make up for Calais which is rightly mine.”

This was enough for Catherine de’ Medici to rally behind her banner both Catholics and Protestants alike. We witnessed the heretofore unimaginable sight of Condé joining forces with the constable’s army. The French had been cutting each other’s throats
in the name of religion and now were lining up side by side, armed and saddled, ready to rip another French city from the English invader’s hands. Poor Elizabeth could not believe they would take from her what she held “by right”. But she only barely held it at all, not having had time to fortify it properly. On 30th July 1563, Condé and the constable carried le Havre by storm.

Alas, though the reconciliation of the generals and their troops was quick and easy, peace was not so simple for the rest of the kingdom after the Edict of Amboise. Zealous priests and fanatical barons armed companies of brigands who ambushed reformers coming home from the wars. In areas of Huguenot strength the edict was equally ignored. The Protestant “captains”, Clermont de Piles and La Rivière, stormed Mussidan and, only a short time later, effected a breach in the walls of Bergerac one night and sent into the town’s streets a few men who sounded drums and trumpets. The garrison, believing the town taken, sought refuge in the citadel, which was then besieged, starved out and taken.

Even in Paris, peace had not truly returned. D’Andelot, restored to his rank of colonel of the infantry after the Edict of Amboise, saw his authority contested by a Catholic, Catherine de’ Medici’s favourite, Charry. Rumour had it as well that Charry was preparing a massacre of the Protestants to exact revenge for the assassination of the Duc de Guise. As this rumour spread and gained credence among our partisans, one of Coligny’s officers, Chastelier-Portaut, attacked Charry as he was crossing the Saint-Michel bridge and drove his sword into his body, “twisting it twice round to enlarge the wound”. Catherine de’ Medici, as we shall see, was not to forget this wound, from which Charry died a short time later.

And so, for more than four years after the Edict of Amboise, there reigned throughout the kingdom a dangerous and violent state of affairs, not quite war yet not entirely peace. Our own family,
tucked away in the Sarlat region, had displayed such fidelity to the Crown that we needed fear nothing from the king’s officers. Due to the spread of the plague throughout the valley surrounding Sarlat, the royal power was so weakened that it could scarcely protect loyal subjects from attack by the wicked.

Towards the end of August we received heartbreaking news. Étienne de La Boétie had been travelling in the Périgord and Agenais countries, and unable to find lodging there because of the outbreak of the plague had returned home to Bordeaux in apparent good health. Indeed, on 8th August he had enjoyed a game of tennis with Monsieur des Cars, the king’s lieutenant in Guyenne. But having got overheated and sweating abundantly, he complained of chills as he went to bed. The next morning he received a note from Michel de Montaigne inviting him to dinner, to which he replied that he was suffering from fever and unable to attend. Montaigne went post haste to see him and found him already quite changed. As La Boétie’s lodgings were in the centre of Bordeaux, surrounded by infected houses, Montaigne succeeded in convincing him to leave within the hour and go as far as Germinian, a village between le Taillan and Saint-Aubin, but two leagues from the city. La Boétie obeyed, but, arriving at Germinian, became so ill that he could not continue the voyage. And it was in this chance site, surrounded by his relatives and friends who rushed to his side, that he died nine days later.

It seemed that La Boétie was not afflicted with the plague, for he presented none of the usual symptoms, but instead complained of dysentery and constant migraines. Moreover, he was unable to eat and visibly wasted away, his eyes hollowing and his skin paling every day. Fearing his disease to be contagious, he urged Montaigne not to remain in his presence except “in flashes”, but Montaigne would hear none of it. He remained at his “immutable friend’s” bed until his death.

La Boétie was entirely conscious of his impending death right to the end, and undertook to settle his affairs with remarkable sangfroid. Having lived a Catholic, he chose to end his life religiously, confessed and took Communion. He then dictated his last will and testament.

Montaigne has detailed his friend’s stoicism. Some find Michel de Montaigne’s version of this final agony somewhat too philosophical and long-winded. But I find this a captious and heartless judgement. During his lifetime La Boétie was wonderfully eloquent and it is to his great credit that he retained this touch of Roman greatness even in the jaws of death and prey to the most unspeakable agonies. There is, moreover, a passage of this funereal speech which, even when I was a grown man, made me weep, not so much for what he says as for what he implies. When he was ready to pass on to his final judgement, La Boétie confided to Montaigne the following sentiment: “If God gave me the choice of returning to life or ending my voyage now, I would be hard put to choose.” Words which show how awful had been the road to death and how little he would have wished to travel that road a second time.