Heretic Dawn (11 page)

“I am.”

“I am Catholic, myself,” he said gravely, though he couldn’t, for all that, keep his face from looking happy, “and though I am aware of all the terrible abuses that have corrupted the mother Church, I have to tell you that I have no intention of leaving her, since I feel like the best of bad sons, not very happy in her lap, but less happy outside it.”

“That’s fine,” I smiled, looking him in the eye, “a lukewarm papist and a not very zealous Huguenot: each of us can accommodate the truths of the other.”

“Or the errors,” added Giacomi, returning my smile. “But, Monsieur doctor, what shall my daily duties be?”

“
Maestro
, you shall teach me the finer points of your art. I do not fence very well, as you’ve observed.”

“Not true! As far as I could tell by the light of the torch, you attacked in the French manner, that is to say, furiously, with ardour and without a moment’s hesitation, covering your mistakes by damnable bodily feints and using your whole torso where a turn of the wrist would have sufficed.”

“Well,
maestro
,” I cried, “you’ve made me out to be as gross and untutored a swordsman as if I were a cook in a fight with only his spit to defend him! But just wait! I’ll be a very serious student!”

“And I, Monsieur doctor, shall be your vassal,” returned Giacomi, with one of his deepest and most graceful bows, and added, quoting Dante, in his beautiful and expressive Italian, “
Tu duce, tu signore e tu maestro!
”
‡‡

“
E tu maestro!
” I cried. “But Giacomi, you’re using the
tu
form with me!”

“It’s the poetic
tu
,” he answered, though his contrition seemed a bit feigned, since he was the most self-assured man I’d ever encountered.

“Giacomi,” I continued, as though I’d momentarily forgotten myself in the emotion of this exchange, and liking this
maestro
already more than I could say, “I have a younger brother whom I hold very dear and an older brother whom I care little for. Would you consider becoming my older brother, by choice if not by blood?”

At this, Giacomi fell silent and, though he smiled in gratitude, I felt as though he was taken aback by my French impetuousness and I blushed and couldn’t speak.

Seeing this, the
maestro
, guessing my confusion, took my two hands in his and said with courteous gravity: “With all my heart, Monsieur doctor, if you really believe I am worthy of such an honour.”

Ah, Giacomi! I still feel a rush of emotion as I write these lines, so many years having withered and been blown to the winds since that day. And though I seemed to be fishing impulsively and without due consideration of the consequences of my offer, I now feel, after much reflection, given the mettle you displayed in the first test of our friendship, I was right to bind my soul to yours with grappling hooks of the strongest steel!

My other brother, after his five days spent in that ardent furnace, returned thinner and dreamy, and slept for twenty-four hours straight, after which he abandoned himself to despair for sinning against Our Lord’s law, having fornicated outside the sacrament of marriage, at one moment berating himself mercilessly, at the next talking endlessly of his sorceress, with a light in his azure eyes in which we could read the delights that had devoured him so completely without, however, satisfying him. Indeed, for some people the abyss of ardent pleasures has no end and, once plunged therein, they can never climb back out.

“Ah, Monsieur doctor!” Giacomi opined with a sly smile. “When I hear you talk about your brother Samson, it occurs to me that this Norman wench has a lot in common with my wench from Genoa, and of the pair we’d do well to quote the divine Dante, who said of hell: ‘
Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate
.’”
§§

Meanwhile, after the sanctimonious lady had left for Rome, whinnying after the indulgences that they were selling like a mare after her oats, I recounted to Samson our battle in the rue de la Caussalerie.

“Oh, Pierre!” he moaned in shame. “While you out were risking your life, I was holed up, wallowing in sin. If those rascals had killed you I could never have forgiven myself!”

“But here I am, alive, my brother! And you’ll be with me when we go to Barbentane to see my Angelina, accompanied by Miroul and my brother Giacomi.”

“Your brother, my brother?” wondered Samson, his azure eyes suddenly clouded, whether in confusion or pain I couldn’t tell. He looked at me quizzically for a moment and then came right to the point like an arrow shot from a crossbow, his transparent eyes staring at me with such candid innocence “Do you love him more than me?”

“Of course not, my Samson!” I cried, rising from my stool and embracing him; holding him tight, I said, overflowing with emotion, “Samson, you are the summit and cloudy peak of my fraternal love and no one can ever replace you there!”

He brushed away his tears with the back of his right hand and, not being one of those jealous hearts that never trust anyone, he believed me without hesitation and was immediately and for evermore satisfied.

The next morning I received a letter from Angelina that plunged me into despair. Monsieur de Montcalm, it seemed, had been embroiled
for months in a lawsuit concerning a mill he owned in Gonesse, and had now decided that it would be most advantageous for his suit to go to Paris and plead with the judges there.

As he could not bear to be separated from them even for a day, he was taking his wife and daughter with him.

“Oh, Monsieur,” wrote Angelina,

Ah, dear reader, has anyone ever received a more innocent, touching and naive letter? And can you imagine the mix of bitterness and joy these adorable lines produced, since Angelina was both so near to my heart and yet so far away, there being no way I could possibly join her in Paris were she to remain there for a long time? How could I get to the capital? With what money? And under what pretext could I possibly persuade my father to allow me to make such a perilous and expensive journey?

Throwing myself on my bed, I kissed this letter as I would have kissed the hand of the woman who’d written it, and bathed it with the tears I simply couldn’t hold back. Try as I might, I couldn’t stop the sobs that wracked me, so cruel was this wound, and all the more so since it would have only been a week’s forced march to reach Barbentane, and I was already imagining how warm and sweet her body would feel in my arms when suddenly she’d been snatched away and sequestered in an inaccessible place on the other side of the kingdom. Now the many months that separated us felt like the ocean that stretches limitless away in front of a shipwrecked man on a raft. What an arid desert my life now seemed! After this reversal, everything seemed vain, dry, rocky, uninteresting, absent of any comfort whatsoever—not even my recent appointment as a venerable doctor of medicine, which now seemed like a hollow victory in the teeth of my suffering.

Oh the folly, the dreams, the fond insatiability of a lover! I held Angelina’s letter close to my heart and, but a minute later, wiping away my tears, pulled it from my doublet and wanted more than anything to reread it. What a haven of grace! I reread it more than a hundred times, each time comforted by the sound of her voice (since her letter was as lively and as petulant), and I believed I could see her standing there, looking at me with her infinitely tender doe’s eyes. But alas! What a high price I paid for these imaginary pleasures, since the more they made her present to me, the more they rendered her absence acutely painful.

For three days I almost never left my left my room, but lay on my bed suffering a thousand deaths, crying and groaning, descending to the great hall only to eat a few morsels of the stingy repasts at Maître Sanche’s table. In the end, Madame de Joyeuse sent her valet to enquire after me and I sent him back with the message that I had taken to my bed and had, for the nonce, to remain there. Would you believe
it? This noble lady, as crazy as I was, but for a different reason, had the audacity to come to visit me at nightfall, it’s true, and in a rented carriage so that no one would see her coat of arms outside my lodgings, and, in addition, wearing a mask, veil and dress that she thought would look bourgeois (but which, in my view, were hardly that).

She stayed three long hours, locked in my room, consoling me (since I told her all about Angelina) and gradually her comforts slipped, by insensible degrees, onto an emotional slope that gradually brought me to comfort her. Which I did out of gratitude and good breeding, and, yes, because the seclusion of the past three days had done nothing to temper my vigour, a fact I observed with astonishment, having believed myself dead to the world.

In any case, the next morning I felt well enough to begin my fencing lessons with Giacomi, though not for very long this first time, yet long enough for me to realize that I had to unlearn everything I’d learnt with Cabusse, since, without moving his body at all, or even, it seemed his arm, Giacomi managed to keep my point from ever touching him, whereas his, if he’d wanted to, could have opened buttonholes in all my vital parts.

I can still see my Giacomi at this first lesson (Miroul sitting on a stool, not missing a single detail), standing so tall and graceful in his precise and perfect positions, seeming to be a spider in the physical distribution of his body and a bird in his vivacity, his black eyes protruding, on his face an expression of courteous civility, while ceremoniously he parried my awkward thrusts and touched me, but held back just as his blade made the touch.

“Pierre,” he said, finally taking two steps back as lightly as if he were dancing, “hold on tight! I’m going to have the honour of disarming you!”

So saying, he lowered his sword in an ample and noble salute. I couldn’t believe that I was hearing such quiet assurance, but before
I could react, my right hand was empty, my sword leaping from its grasp and hurtling itself to the other end of the room.

“Ah! My brother!” I cried. “What magic is this?”

“Magic?” cried Giacomi, who seemed insulted by this word. “Say, rather, art! Art and knowledge! A technique honed through study and mastered through unceasing practice!”

The next day I received a letter from my father, which ordered me, since I’d received my promotion to doctor, and Samson had been promoted to master apothecary a year ago already, to say farewell to Montpellier and return to Mespech where, though we were not “prodigal sons”, he would kill the fatted calf for us and in honour of Giacomi, who had saved my life, and of Miroul, whom he respected well above his condition.

I gave myself a week to say goodbye to Thomassine, to Cossolat and to Madame de Joyeuse, who wept to break my heart and held me so tight I thought she’d never let go. She made me swear to come back as soon as I could without offending the Brethren, and out of her incredible generosity gave me enough money to allow us to buy new clothes—not just Samson and me, but also Giacomi, whose doublet was on its last stitches, and even Miroul, so that he would be dressed as befitted a servant of my father’s barony.

A
FTER THE EDICT OF SAINT-GERMAIN
, a kind of uneasy peace reigned in France between papists and Huguenots, much like those that had preceded it, begrudging and unstable—especially since the offences against our side were so frequent here and there that we hadn’t returned to the throne the fortresses that the edict had specifically obliged us to surrender. In any case, I decided that we could risk taking the easy, longer route home through Carcassonne, Toulouse and Montauban rather than ride through the mountains of Cévennes and Auvergne, which would have slowed and fatigued our horses.

It turned out to be the right decision, for we encountered no attacks or ambushes by the highwaymen of this region and had no adventures save for the non-warlike kind that one comes across in the inns along the way, where the chambermaids are required to see to the needs of their male clientele. But I did not abuse this privilege as the Baron de Caudebec was wont to do, remaining in each hostel only the time required to rest our horses. During each stay, Samson reasserted his inflexible virtue in Dame Gertrude de Luc’s absence, of course, but had no influence over mine, as you would guess, nor over Miroul’s or my brother Giacomi’s, decked out as he was in a scarlet velveteen doublet that I’d had sewn for him by Martinez, my tailor, before our departure.

With the money Madame de Joyeuse had given me, I bought him a beautiful stallion (necessarily taller than our mares, since, given Giacomi’s height, his feet would have been dragging along the ground if he’d had to ride Accla). And thus ensconced in his saddle on this warhorse, being our senior by five or six years and a good head taller than any of the three of us, he looked like nothing so much as Mentor, keeping watch over Telemachus.

When, after three weeks on the road, we arrived in Sarlat without any delay or misfortune of any kind, and believing we’d already reached our haven—Mespech being no more than five leagues hence—I asked the innkeeper of the Three Sheep to furnish us with a room where, divesting ourselves of our cuirasses and helmets, we donned our doublets so as to appear in all our finery when we greeted the Brethren and all our people in Mespech. This was pure vanity and Giacomi said as much—advising us not to disarm before we were safely within our walls.

But I refused to heed his warning, thinking there was little risk, since I knew the road between Sarlat and Mespech so well I could have told you who tilled this field or that, or owned such and such a farm or hut.

I decided we should take the les Beunes road, which would be the least tiring for our weary mounts, though not the safest for us since it followed the river through a narrow dale, which was flanked on both sides by high slopes too steep for a horse to climb. Giacomi, immediately unhappy with the lay of the land, pointed out that we were entering a funnel trap that offered no escape other than by retracing our steps if we were attacked by a large group, and that put us in danger of being fired on from behind. We followed his advice, and stopped to load our pistols and unsheathe our swords, which we dangled from straps from our wrists—a thoroughly unnecessary precaution in my view, especially since we were but five or six stones’ throws from our mill at les Beunes, whose roof I could make out in the distance through the foliage.

However, when we passed the turn-off for Taniès, we saw four horsemen there, mute and immobile, but who spurred on their steeds as soon as we’d passed, and came trotting along behind us.

“Ah,” I said, “I don’t like this a bit!” remembering a similar situation we’d encountered in the battle in the Corbières. “Let’s take pistols in hand and ask these rascals what they’re up to.”

“My brother,” cautioned Giacomi, “listen to me! Let’s take but one pistol in hand and hide the other between saddle and leg. The best tactic is to conceal from your adversary the weapon you intend to use as a last resort.”

At my command, we turned our horses abruptly and confronted our adversaries face to face, pulling up short a dozen paces from them. Of course, they pulled up short, surprised at the sight of our pistols and caught off-guard, the hunters suddenly become the hunted; so there we were, facing each other with no idea what to do next.

The problem was that, though we were armed with pistols, we were not holding them at the ready, and though they looked like ruffians, they didn’t seem to be highwaymen and were wearing a sort of livery, as if belonging to some gentleman’s household.

“Who do you work for?” I shouted with as mean an expression as I could muster.

To this they made no reply, but looked at each other with the greatest discomfort. This forced me to repeat my question, but this time I drew my pistol and levelled it at the fellow opposite me, who looked like a Gypsy, with a lean and muscular body, lively, liquid eyes and his face dripping sweat as soon as he saw my weapon pointed at his heart.

“Monsieur, we are Baron de Fontenac’s men.”

“So! And do you know who I am?”

To which the Gypsy answered, after some hesitation and as if he were confused as to how to answer, that I was unknown to him.

“My brother,” whispered Giacomi, “the man is lying.”

“So I believe,” I replied softly. “Shall we shoot them?”

“No,” Giacomi counselled, “they’re not armed. ’Twould be murder.”

“Let’s shoot them anyway!” said Miroul. “That’d make four fewer troublemakers for us to deal with.”

“Oh, no! No, no!” Samson exclaimed, staring at us in all his azure innocence. “Are they not Christians, same as us?”

“I know the measure of these Christians!” snarled Miroul, whose whole family had had their throats cut by such ruffians as these.

“My good fellows,” I called, “what were you doing on the Taniès path?”

“We were just returning from the village,” said the Gypsy leader. And certain it was that he was lying again.

“So then why were you galloping up behind us?”

“Just wanted to pass you by.”

And right away, my finger started itching most urgently to dispatch this fellow without any more ado, but I remembered that Fontenac controlled the judges in Sarlat (so completely that Bouillac’s testimony about the raid on our les Beunes mill had gone unheeded) and I didn’t want to give our scourge of a neighbour the excuse to drag the Baron de Siorac before the Présidial for the murder of his men, and so resolved to solve this situation peacefully.

“Well then, we’ll let you pass us unharmed,” I announced, “and may the God who judges us decided whether I’ve done the right thing.”

“We thank you and thank God, Monsieur,” answered the Gypsy, who opened his mouth wide to take in a lungful of air in evident relief. “I will find a way to pay you back should the occasion arise.”

We pulled our horses aside on the edge of the path and they rode by, very relieved to be alive, and their backs, I’ll wager, tingling with the fear of our bullets until they’d passed the bend in the road.

“My brother,” Giacomi now asked, “where is Mespech?”

“Just beyond that bend, you take a path to the left, cross a little bridge over the les Beunes river leading to our mill, and from there another path leads to the chateau.”

“Is there no other way to get directly to the mill?”

“I’m afraid not. The fields you see off to our left are too swampy to negotiate.”

“Well then,” said Giacomi, “instead of flying like starlings into the nets they’ve set for us, I think it’d be wiser to return to Sarlat.”

I thought about this for a minute. “I don’t agree. Our horses are exhausted. The Gypsies would surely catch up to us and then we’d be forced to fight far from Mespech without any hope of the help they’d surely be able to provide. What do you think, Samson?”

“But who says these good people want to attack us?” he asked, his blue eyes opened wide in innocence.

“Ah, Samson!” I said, smiling to mask the pain I felt at this impasse. “You really don’t live in this world! You read too much of the Gospels and not enough of Machiavelli!”

“Too much of the Gospels? That’s no way to talk!”

But before I could answer, Miroul said, “Monsieur, may I tell you what I think?”

“Speak, Miroul.”

“Well then,
primo
, as you said at your
triduanes
, let’s fire a shot into the air to alert Coulondre Iron-arm at the mill so he can send Jacotte through the underground passage to Mespech.
Secundo
, let’s send one among us, and I volunteer to do it, to the bend in the road to reconnoitre.”

“Miroul! You speak with a golden tongue! Only I’m going to flip your suggestion on end and put the
secundo
first. Go, Miroul, and see if you can see how many they are and what arms these good people are carrying.”

And so Miroul, carefully hiding his pistol in his boot, dismounted in the blink of an eye, and throwing Giacomi his packhorse’s lead, and to me his gelding’s reins, he headed off, light as a feather, his feet barely touching the ground, to where the road turned, and there, instead of poking his head out by degrees to see what lay ahead, I saw him scale a steep rock that stood at the bend in the road, reach the top and creep along its crest so as to survey the length of the road ahead.

“What enviable agility!” remarked Giacomi in such quiet and serene tones that I couldn’t help but admire his coolness in the heat of our present predicament. “With your permission, my brother,” he added, “I’d like to instruct Miroul in my art. Although he is not of sufficient birth to warrant it, he has earned this consideration.”

“I think so, too. And don’t you think it’s a pity that this honest fellow, as frank as an unbitten écu, valiant, loyal, possessed of good and unfettered intelligence and great dexterity and skill, cannot aspire to a state higher than valet simply because he happened to be born of lowly parents in a farmhouse?”

“He could advance to a higher position if he joined the Church, since he can read and write—or better yet seek his fortune through arms. But in either case he’d have to leave you and he’d never do that. He nurtures too great a love of you for that.”

“And how could I bear it if he left me?” I replied with great feeling. “He’s very dear to me, as well, valet though he may be.”

However, while I was saying this, affecting a tranquil tone with Giacomi, despite the anxiety of the moment, which had, so to speak, sunk to some subterranean level in me, it didn’t escape me that I had put my own convenience ahead of Miroul’s advancement. This thought made me angry with myself, and as he was just then returning, I said to him, “You took a long time. What were you doing up that rock?”

“Monsieur,” said Miroul (his brown eye growing sad while his blue eye remained cold as a sign that he was very hurt at my reproaches),
“I wanted to get high enough above them to see whether they had pistols stuck in their saddlebags, which, I must say, looked quite empty of any firearms. On the other hand, at the tail of this little band of no more than seven men, I saw two riderless horses, which may well mean that there are two rascals waiting to ambush us from atop the bluff at Taniès and pick us off like pigeons.”

“I thank you, Miroul,” I said, thoroughly ashamed at my impatience. “I couldn’t have done so well. Did you see the traitor Fontenac?”

“Indeed I did!” he replied. “Wearing a crimson doublet and cap, and sitting very straight atop a proud white horse that’s trying to make us believe that the soul of his master is of the same colour.”

And although I didn’t find this joke much to my liking, I laughed out loud at it to soothe the wounded feelings I’d inflicted on my gentle valet.

“Miroul,” I said, “tie the packhorse to the bough of yonder fig tree that’s growing out between the rocks of the bluff here, remount your horse and fire a shot into the air, as you suggested, and then reload.”

While Miroul did as I ordered, Giacomi took his cape from his shoulders, and, having placed one of his pistols underneath his thigh, threw the cape over his knees.

“Samson,” I cautioned, “don’t be so dreamy and thoughtful. I know you’re valiant—be quick and decisive. And remember to fire right away if fire you must. This Fontenac is the scourge of Mespech, as we’ve told you a hundred times.”

“I’ll remember,” said Samson.

I then quietly recited the Our Father and the three others joined in, and having made the sign of the cross on my forehead, my lips and my heart, I exclaimed with happy confidence, as my father would have done had he been there, “Comrades, the day is ours! Let’s go!”

We put spurs to horses, but gently, and set off with our swords dangling by their ties from our wrists, and with pistols in hand, our
horses moving at a walk, their ears pricked; and as for us, our eyes were peeled, darting this way and that, and our hearts were pounding in our chests as you can well imagine, underneath our feigned calm. God knows how long it took to round the bend past Miroul’s rock, and much longer it seemed to us. But suddenly, there we were and surprised to behold our enemies, even though we knew they’d be there. There weren’t seven of them as Miroul had reported, but eight, and the eighth, leading the two riderless horses, was the priest of Marcuays, whom the farmers in the region called “Pincers”, because of his debauchery, as I’ve recounted elsewhere.

“Hey, Monsieur priest,” I cried, “what are you doing here?”

But he was unable to answer since our horses all began whinnying like crazy, probably because our mares smelt an uncut stallion in the opposite camp. The horses of our enemies also began a wild chorus in response, as well as a sudden chaos of croups, hooves and chests that we had to control and calm before human words could be heard. I said “words” and not “reason” since it’s my belief that man is a less intelligent animal than his mount and a thousand times more cruel.

All this time, unable to hear a word in this din, we all looked each other over, and, for my part, with great curiosity, for though this Fontenac was the sworn enemy of my family (as his father was before him) I’d never laid eyes on him before, since the baron had never actively participated in any of the ambushes he’d set for us except the present one, which considerably surprised me and aroused my curiosity. And although he was the most egregious brigand in all of creation, I couldn’t keep from admiring him as he sat stiff and upright on his white horse trying to control it. Physically he was handsome enough, a large and strong gentleman, tending towards corpulent, I judged. He had a haughty face, with curly hair and beard and intense eyes. However, his face betrayed, when he turned his head, too much of a resemblance to a bird of prey, with a nose shaped like
a vulture’s beak. Fontenac’s clothing corresponded exactly with his aspect: he was superbly dressed in a crimson doublet with matching shoes and red satin slashes.