Heretic Dawn (24 page)

“Miroul!” I cried, once I’d won the field. “You’re bleeding! Are you wounded?”

“It’s just a bruise to my fist,” replied Miroul, “and nothing serious. But Monsieur, look at your doublet! You can’t go visiting Monsieur de Nançay looking like that! We’ll have to sew you up first!”

Sadly, he was right! My blue satin doublet, which had been so carefully made by the Jewish tailor in Montpellier, was brand new and, I must say, very becoming and, if I do say so, very beautiful. And even though the frivolous lady in the rue des Sablons despised it as being “not in fashion”, this doublet which I was so proud of and wore with such pride had suffered a two-inch rip on its front, and when I looked more closely, I confess, dear reader, that I was near tears. Oh, Lord! What a strange animal is man! When I should have been on my knees giving thanks to Providence for saving my life in this encounter in which the blade of my assailant had passed so close to my heart, I was broken-hearted at the damage to my clothing!

“Monsieur,” said a fellow who, along with a good three dozen Guillaumes and Gautiers, had watched, open-mouthed, the attempted
robbery of my horse without so much as lifting a finger or calling for help, “it’s a fact that your doublet is badly torn!”

“And whose fault is that,” I cried angrily, “if not those who stood around watching these villains do their business without a word or any effort to help my valet?”

“Well, Monsieur,” cried a Gautier, “risk getting beaten up? And in a street fight? I’d be careful
not
to intervene, as much as I might pity the loss of your doublet!”

“And who says it’s lost?” I screamed against all reason.

“Well, it’s a fact, isn’t it, that it’s ruined,” observed another, “and I can’t see how even the best seamstress would be able to do much for it.”

“Monsieur,” said another, “take it to the used-clothes market. The Jews will buy it from you. Won’t be much, but it’s better than nothing.”

“Wait, Monsieur!” cried Miroul, seeing me flushed with anger, and so out of control that I was on the verge of drawing my sword again. “I beg you! No need to get angry! You’re safe! Your Pompée as well! Let’s go back to our lodgings! Alizon will do wonders with your doublet!”

“Can you believe it, Miroul?” I said in
langue d’oc
. “In broad daylight! In front of Notre-Dame! In front of these gawking onlookers! ’Sblood! Why is Paris so famous? It’s a cut-throat’s heaven!”

M
AÎTRE
RECROCHE HAD NOT YET
returned to the house when we got back, but Alizon, who was just waking up, had no sooner seen my torn doublet than she had taken it from me, threaded a needle with some blue silk thread, and undertaken to repair it. As her fingers flew, she listened wide-eyed to my story with eager ears and cries of “Amazing!” or other glosses on my tale.

“Ah, Monsieur,” she said in her rapid and sharp Parisian accent, “it’s a miracle you weren’t killed! One valet to guard two horses? What were you thinking? There are more thieves in Paris than lice on the head of a monk! Blessed Virgin! They’d steal the king’s carriage with the king inside it if his Swiss guards weren’t there to fend them off!”

“Alizon,” I replied, “you sew beautifully, but do you think the repairs will be visible?”

“Well, as for that,” she sighed, stretching and pulling her shoulders back, either to rest a bit or to show her figure off (or both?), “it won’t show as much as a man’s member does in the middle of his body but more than the eyeliner on a woman’s face. You can’t repair clothing without leaving a scar, and especially silk. You could still go about in this doublet, but you certainly couldn’t wear it to visit the king in his Louvre, if that’s what you want to do. You’d have to order another one, my noble Monsieur, and all the more so since…”

“Since, Alizon?” I asked, since she wouldn’t go on.

“Well, Monsieur,” she said looking at me sweetly, “I don’t want to wound your pride, as you are so nice, but this doublet I’ve just repaired is most assuredly
not
fashionable here. In Paris, a doublet has to be much more ample in the shoulders, and wider under the arms to include a pocket for your purse, and should finish up in a point at the fly, with some stuffing to inflate the stomach, especially since you’re so thin. It’s the Duc d’Anjou who wants it so, since he thinks a good stomach adds nobility to a man’s silhouette.”

“Another doublet, Alizon?” I cried. “How you talk! Samson will never give me the money for it, since he keeps so tight a watch on our purse! And as for me, I wouldn’t go ordering a doublet with the little bit of money I’ve got left.”

In response, Alizon threw me a glance, then another, and yet one more while she continued sewing with an unstoppable speed, and all I could think about was how dark she was, of skin, of eyes and of hair, sweet little fly from hell that she was, with her little body so slender, so shapely and so lively, with a waist you could enclose with your two hands like a child’s.

“Well, Monsieur,” she said after what seemed like a very long time, “what a pity! If I were a high and mighty noblewoman, living for my pleasure without a care in the world, I’d give you the money you need to make you as beautiful in your clothes as you are without.”

I opened my mouth to thank her for such a sweet compliment when the door of the workshop flew open and Maître Recroche burst in with a package in his hand, all muddy and battered and in a such a bad humour it looked as though he could eat a bonnet. “Baba!” he cried in an angry voice and with his eyebrows raised. “What goes on in here when the master’s away? Are you sleeping? Hey, Baragran! Coquillon! Get up! Get up!” he repeated, administering a hard kick in the kidneys. “You think you can laze about? Sleep all day?”

“And you all night, while we’re working!” spit Alizon.

“Shut your little trap!” he said, raising his arm as if to slap her, but Alizon seized her scissors and held them so resolutely in front of her face, her black eyes blazing fire, that Recroche quickly put his hands behind his back and said, “What’s this? A doublet? Are we making doublets here now?”

“Nothing but a repair,” said Alizon, “and it’s done. Monsieur de Siorac, here’s your clothing.”

“What?” cried Recroche, rubbing his vulture’s beak with his index finger. “So you’re doing work for someone else in my atelier? And during time that you owe to me? That’s a felony! It’s entirely against the rules of the guild!”

“Ah, yes! These rules! It was your colleagues and you who wrote them!” sneered Alizon.

“Maître Recroche,” I intervened, “’tis I who asked Alizon to do this repair. And since she did it in your atelier, on your time—”

“Using my thread and my needles,” snarled Recroche.

“And your
scissors
,” observed Alizon bitterly.

“I’ll pay you for it.”

“That will be two sols,” said Maître Recroche in the most modest tones and lowering his eyes.

“What?” shrieked Alizon, now abuzz like a bee whose hive has been hit. “What! Two sols for two minutes of my work when you pay me three sols, five deniers for an entire day!”

“Silly hen!” cried Maître Recroche with utter scorn. “The price of your labour and the price I demand for my goods are two different things. Without that, where would I get any profit? And this,” he said, seizing my doublet, “is an exquisite repair, executed with the tiniest needlepoints, an example of the very high quality of work done in my atelier.”

“Ah, Maître Recroche,” I laughed through my anger, taking my clothing from him, “say no more, or you’ll end up charging me
double for my doublet! Not a word more! Here are your little coins. And thank you so much for the needle and the thread, the stool she sat on and for Alizon’s marvellous work.”

At this Alizon laughed out loud and even Baragran smiled, anxious as he was to remain in his master’s good graces and not to be replaced by a wench worth only three sols, five deniers.

“All right! Back to work!” ordered Recroche, whose humour had softened a bit since my two sols were warming his wallet. “Monsieur de Siorac,” he said, “please don’t believe that everything is about profit in my work. I had to wait three long hours in the antechamber of the Baronne des Tourelles to deliver the bonnets she’d ordered to be sent no later than daybreak. Three hours! While the baronne was asleep! You hear? Asleep! And she is still sleeping, I’ll warrant!”

At this point there came a knock on the door. Coquillon, at a sign from his master, ran to open and an insolent knave of a valet strutted in wearing an amaranth livery with flaps of gold, and sniffed in a very haughty tone, “Is there a Maître Recroche hereabouts?”

“There is!” answered Recroche, as amiable as the iron bands that reinforced his doors.

“My mistress,” said the valet, nose in air, “the Baronne des Tourelles, desires a word with you.”

“She would be most welcome!” replied Recroche curtly; after which, hands behind his back, he pretended to be studying the ceiling, finding this valet, I surmised, to be an insufferable buffoon. For his part, the valet looked at us one after the other as if we were so many piles of excrement by the side of the road, and sniffed as if he were afraid we might infect him with our breathing.

“I shall go,” he said through pursed lips, “and inform my mistress.”

And off he went. If one were to judge the mistress by the servant, one could only see in him a bad augury of what was to come, and I already imagined her with the traits of an angry gorgon. But, oh
reader! What a mistake! I didn’t have eyes enough to devour her when she came in, all a-sparkle in her pale-green satin gown, copied, as Alizon explained later, from ones that Princesse Margot had worn, which were the most ample petticoats in the entire kingdom, so ample indeed that the ladies who wore them could scarcely fit through a doorway. Above this sumptuous, flared dress, her bodice was laced tightly enough to accentuate and swell her breasts and make them appear so round and large that they seemed almost bare. Above these charms, her long, gracious neck was set off by a large round collar that extended up behind her neck like a lace tail of a peacock. This ornament was studded by pure oriental pearls, set in three rows, encircling her neck. Her hair was braided in coils in which glittering emeralds and golden combs could be seen. It was a marvel that such a structure could maintain its balance on this pretty head.

And what a beautiful sweet face she had! It resembled the face of the Virgin I’d seen in Notre-Dame: a fine, straight nose, a cherry-coloured mouth, eyes blacker than jade. But the Virgin was sculpted in marble, and this face was so lively and animated that you would have said it was that of a sweet baby robin, turning its beak this way and that, hopping from branch to branch.

This beauty was followed by a pretty, strong chambermaid (whom Miroul immediately engaged in a battle of seductive looks) who carried the lady’s purse, her perfume bottle, her handkerchief and her mask; by a little valet carrying a fan; and by a heavy devil of a groom who was dragging at the end of a rope a plank which (as I saw later) he was to place on the sticky pavement outside the door so that his mistress wouldn’t soil her dainty slippers when she got out of her carriage.

I was able to catch a glimpse of one of these dainty shoes under the vertiginous movement of the folds of her gown and saw that it was of a matching green satin with a gold buckle and a very high heel. Thus perched on one end atop her heels and on the other enlarged by
three good inches by her majestic coiffure, the Baronne des Tourelles seemed taller than I, and more voluminous as well, but her middle seemed so thin that, in all, she resembled an hourglass.

“Well, Maître Recroche,” she cried in a voice so rapid and abrupt that the words fairly crackled on your ear like the rain in a storm on your roof, “I bring you my sincerest apologies for having lingered in bed whilst you were waiting in my antechamber to deliver your bonnets!
It weighs on my conscience!
I had dined and stayed up so late the night before! And in such hilarious company! Oh, Recroche,
I should die of shame!
Recroche, Recroche, where are the bonnets? Let me have them immediately! This instant! Without delay, I beg you!”

“Without delay, Madame?” countered Recroche with a deep bow in which he expressed, it seemed to me, some secret disrespect, being of those Parisian merchants who like neither the nobles nor the princes and value no one and nothing more than themselves. “Delay, Madame? Didn’t I ‘delay’ for three long hours in your antechamber? My atelier was, meanwhile, unoccupied. My companions without work! My business abandoned! Well and good, Madame, but that will cost you ten sols more, that delay.”

“’Tis no matter!” cried Madame de Tourelles. “Recroche, those bonnets! Those bonnets, this instant! Ah,” she added, “I’m suffocating! It’s so hot this August!
I could die of it!
”

And putting her hands on her slim waist, as if to undo the corset that was oppressing her bosom, she cried, almost faint: “Corinne, my perfume! Nicotin, my fan!” Then, having breathed in the one and agitated the other, she was refreshed, and Recroche having unpacked the bonnets, she tried on each one over the structure of her hair arrangement while Alizon held a mirror for her, looking quite sullen.

I leave to your imagination the cries, the exclamations, the little faces, the chattering, the gracious turns of her neck, the swellings of her bosom and the “I could dies” that accompanied this fitting. When,
at last, the baronne had finished, and asked Corinne for her purse to pay Recroche, she whispered a few words into his ear, which I couldn’t hear, but whose meaning I guessed when Recroche turned to me and said, “Monsieur de Siorac, the Baronne des Tourelles requests the pleasure of being introduced to you.”

“Madame,” I said, stepping forward, “I am overcome both by your person and by your good and kind benevolence.” And, so saying, I kissed—not her hand, but the tips of her fingers, as Madame de Joyeuse had taught me to do, as she didn’t want me to be so greedy in these matters, saying, “My sweet, don’t kiss the ladies’ hands as if you wanted to swallow them! And as for the fire in your eyes, try to moderate it. An honest lady is not some chambermaid that in a single glance you can lay out on the grass! Leave her, for goodness’ sake, some time to make up her mind!”

That Madame des Tourelles was satisfied with my ardent but respectful behaviour I believe, since she paid me a thousand little compliments, and with these compliments she mingled various adroit questions, posed in such a lively, prompt, imperious, yet simultaneously coaxing and coquettish manner that I was unable to resist so much suave authority, and in less than five minutes I told her almost everything about me.

“Monsieur,” she said, “would you be good enough to accompany me to my carriage? My groom’s plank is so narrow that I’m afraid I might fall onto the muddy pavement!
I could die of it!
Monsieur, your hand, I beg you!”

“Madame,” said I, “it is yours, and with it, my arm and my sword!”

“Well, Monsieur,” she laughed behind her fan, “you’re very gallant in your Périgord! Your sword! I wasn’t aiming so high!”

“Madame,” I replied, taking a lighter tone, not allowing myself to be deterred by her offhandedness, “it’s nevertheless true. Use me as you please, I’m yours.”

“Monsieur de Siorac,” she replied with a look that, had I taken it for what it clearly said, would have given me infinite rights with her—but then isn’t that exactly the point? There is no look, whether it has a literal meaning or not, that can’t subsequently be denied to have such a meaning. “Monsieur de Siorac,” she said, but then fell silent, pretending to be confused.

“Madame,” I said hanging on her vermilion lips, “speak, I’m listening.”

“Monsieur de Siorac, will you climb into my carriage and ride a little way with me?”

“Certainly, Madame.”

“Monsieur,” she said, correcting her remonstration with a more amorous look, “we don’t say ‘certainly’ in Paris. It’s the language of the Huguenots. We say, ‘assuredly’.”

“Assuredly, Madame,” I said with a bow, “I’m yours until the end of the road, and, if you wish, until the end of worlds known and unknown.”

“Monsieur,” she laughed, “you have an easy tongue, it seems. And if you’re as vigorous as you are witty, we shall be great friends for a while. But climb in, I beg you!”

With great emotion, I found myself sitting beside this noble lady, or at least as close as her voluminous hoop skirt would allow, on a very well-padded seat in her closed carriage, which was, as far as I could tell, upholstered in pale-green satin, Corinne and her little valet sitting opposite us.