The Brethren (17 page)

“My sons,” continued my father, solemnly mastering his feelings, “we have some news of great import to share with you, as well as a grave decision Sauveterre and I have taken.” He paused before continuing: “This is the news: François II died on 5th December of an infection in his ear. He had scarcely reigned a year and a half. He was only sixteen when he died.” Here he stopped and looked at the Reverend Duroy as if expecting some commentary, and the minister, his hands resting on the arms of the chair, raising his long white beard and pale face towards us, said in a grave voice while remaining perfectly still:

“God has intervened in this! He has struck down the father in his eye and the son in his ear. The former because he would not look at the truths of the Reformation. The latter because he would not listen to them.”

“As a consequence,” said my father, “the Guise family has been banished from power. And the time was never so ripe as now for our cause throughout the kingdom. Two royal princes have taken sides with us: Anthoine de Bourbon, the king of Navarre, and his brother the Prince de Condé, whom Guise had imprisoned, but whom Queen Catherine, the regent, Charles IX being still a minor, has set free. Coligny has been reinstated with full powers. He is once again admiral of France, and d’Andelot again the major general of the infantry. Ten bishops of the realm have come out on our side, and among them the bishop of Périgueux. Michel de L’Hospital, the chancellor named by Queen Catherine, secretly favours our cause, and the regent herself, it seems, is inclined towards the Reformation. In truth,” he continued with a rapid smile, “she is a wolf, but, like Jonas’s, is becoming a sheep.” He paused. “Here in Périgord the four Caumont brothers, whose power derives from the impregnable Château de Castelnau, have long since embraced the cause, and the Baron de Biron, captain of the companies of the king in the seneschalty of Sarlat, would not move against us even if ordered to. The proof is that when there was a riot at the beginning of December in Sarlat because the populace was upset that the Reverend Duroy here had buried a reformist, Monsieur Delpeyrat, under the lantern of the dead with neither priests nor torches, Biron refused to lend the bishop of Sarlat the support of his men at arms.”

My father fell silent again, then said gravely, pronouncing each of his words clearly and emphatically: “Sauveterre and I have decided, after much reflection, that the moment has come to cease hearing Mass and openly to declare our faith. My sons,” he added, coming
to a halt in front of us, his hands on his hips and glancing at each one of us in turn with an impatient and severe look, “how does this sit with you? Speak! Will you follow your father?”

“I will espouse my father’s faith right willingly and with all my heart,” said François, somewhat too hastily, I felt.

“I am already of the faith,” said Samson in a quiet voice. “I know no other.”

Since I alone said nothing, my father threw me an imperious look and said curtly, “And you, Pierre?”

I replied, my heart pounding, “I was raised by my mother, by your agreement, in the Catholic religion. But I am only ten years old. I am still very ignorant. Grant me that, before I follow you, I may be given instruction in the reformed religion.” My father’s eyes blazed: “I will not be satisfied with a dilatory reply!” he snapped. “Beware, Pierre, lest this delay in following me be inspired by the Devil!…”

The Reverend Raymond Duroy raised his hand and, turning his noble and austere face towards my father, said in a grave voice: “Only on a resistant ground can a solid faith be built. Not everything can be imputed to the Evil One. If Pierre wishes to be instructed into the truths of our faith, I will accept the task of teaching him.”

Still shaken by this sudden anger of my father—who was in everything my model and my hero—I stared at the Reverend Duroy. I was grateful to him for his unexpected help, but the more I observed his athletic build, his venerable white beard and his high forehead denoting wisdom and knowledge, the more diminished I felt in his presence. His deep dark eyes shone from his pale yet vigorous countenance and his stare was so intense that I could hardly look him in the eye. Then and there I told myself that I had about as much chance resisting this formidable champion of the new faith as I would wrestling barehanded with Jonas.

I
T DIDN’T TAKE
the Reverend Duroy a week to convert me. He even spent much of this time in other activities, for he was a man of untiring energy, always riding through the countryside preaching the Word among the people.

Even before he opened his mouth, I felt he had won the battle: I had already long since figured out that the Mass at Mespech was for women and servants. The Catholic cult seemed to consist of Father Pincers, an ignorant lecherous drunk, insistently posing scabrous questions about sexuality which always left me confused. I also equated Catholicism with the miscreants who had burnt Anne du Bourg and, before him, a long list of martyrs whose names were cited with veneration by the Brethren. I admired no one more than my father and Uncle de Sauveterre, and, through them, I had already adopted the cause of the persecuted Huguenots long before I embraced their faith.

And yet, I did not embrace that faith without some reticence, for I had some reservations I knew I must stifle to avoid worse quarrels with my father. For example, I could not grasp the difference between salvation by grace rather than by works, and, from my own simplistic viewpoint, my mother’s religion was much more satisfying on this point. Moreover, I was much attached to the idea of Purgatory, which I found to be a most useful institution, where, in my repentance, I would have gladly accepted a short stay to wash away my sins, and
in particular my games with little Hélix. I was even more attached to the Virgin Mary, whom I confusedly identified with Barberine, with her warm bosom, her sweet face and her consoling arms. In my humble and puerile opinion, there seemed to be only men to love in this new religion. And what I felt then, I still believe in some way. Even putting idolatry and images aside, no Creator can escape some resemblance to man. Isn’t it a pity that nothing womanly is made holy, not even her maternal function?

My father had made his sons keep the secret of the Brethren’s decision until such a time as I should be converted, and so during the week occupied by my conversion, my mother, the Siorac twins and all the servants were blissfully ignorant that Mespech was going to transfer to the reformers’ camp, and all of them along with it. My father decided to speak to Isabelle de Siorac alone and so summoned her with Franchou to his chambers on the evening of Sunday, 22nd December. He had thought to take advantage of the presence among us of Jonas, Cathau and Cabusse to undertake a mass conversion of our household after dinner that evening.

The two candelabra (which had not seen service since the evening Sauveterre informed us of the fall of Calais to the English in 1347) were, on Jean de Siorac’s orders, lit by la Maligou in order to emphasize the solemnity of the moment, or perhaps to symbolize the light that the Brethren hoped to bring to the servants. At the far end of the brightly polished table sat the Baron de Siorac, Monsieur de Sauveterre and the Reverend Duroy, whose white hair was illuminated from behind by the dancing firelight, which seemed to make a halo around his venerable head.

Along each side of the table, our servants (all except Franchou, whose service to her mistress was required in her chambers) took their places according to their priority in the household: from the head of the table (where the minister and the Brethren sat) to the far
end where the women sat, were seated first the sons, then Catherine (six years old at the time), then the Siorac twins (because they were related to us), Cabusse and his wife (because they were landowners at le Breuil), the two soldiers (because of their length of service), Jonas and Faujanet (who, as more recent recruits, came after them), and finally Barberine, la Maligou, Franchou (when she finally arrived), little Hélix carrying our nurse’s baby Annet in her arms, and lastly Little Sissy, who was the same age as my sister Catherine but as brown-skinned and dark-haired as Catherine was blonde.

Our household was not without some inkling that something was afoot, first because the Brethren’s religious opinions had long been known to them, even if, for prudence’s sake, nothing had ever been said of this outside the walls of Mespech, and secondly because they knew very well who Raymond Duroy was, ever since the tumult that had followed the burial of a Huguenot under the lantern of the dead at Sarlat had made him famous throughout our regions. But they could hardly have suspected the commitment that was to be demanded of them, believing perhaps naively that Catholic servants could continue in the service of a Huguenot master.

In this my father was quick to disabuse them. Sitting, standing, coming and going before them, stopping, crossing his arms, putting his hands on his hips, he spoke in his rapid and urgent manner, a bit rambling and lacking logical order, so passionate was he. Yet gradually the implications of his speech became clear: Sauveterre, the baron and his three sons, François, Pierre and Samson de Siorac, intended to declare publicly their adherence to the reformed religion, and they expected their relatives (meaning the Siorac twins), their friends (meaning Cabusse and Cathau) and their servants to follow their lead: first because this path was God’s way, long obscured by the papists, but now revealed again by the reformers; next because, in these troubled times, it would be difficult for the Brethren to trust
anyone who did not share their faith, fearing that such a one might, sooner or later, under the influence of a confessor, be led to betray Mespech to its enemies. Certainly my father did not say straight out that he would dismiss anyone who did not convert to the reformed Church, but that was the obvious conclusion to draw from his words, and I could see from the astonishment and terror of our household that this was what they understood.

When I think back on this scene today, it makes me uneasy. For the Baron de Siorac was doing at Mespech exactly what he so strongly reproached Henri II for having done in his kingdom: demanding that his subjects embrace his own religion. The difference is that he lacked the power to send them to the stake. At the very least, however, he could deprive them of their daily bread and banish them from his domain, a sanction which was of no little consequence given the vast number of beggars who roamed homeless and starving throughout the countryside. At a time when the Roman Church tyrannized the kingdom, the idea of religious freedom had certainly shown some progress of late. But that liberty was all too often claimed as a privilege of the upper classes, or, at the very least, of the rich burghers in the towns. It did not extend to the people, still entirely governed and constrained by feudal ties—the same people over whom the Roman Church maintained its sway by its pomp, its processions, its rich and lustrous ceremonies, and its appeal to popular superstition.

Having said his piece, my father sat down. Such was the terror of our household at the idea of being thrown out of Mespech like a snail from its shell, and thrust unarmed, naked and hungry onto the highways of the world, that their eyes bulged in fear from their sockets, and their dry tongues stuck to their palates unable to utter a syllable.

Considering each of them in turn, Sauveterre measured the degree of their terror and sensed a happy outcome in it. For he
loved the servants of Mespech enough to desire salvation for each and every one of them. Moreover, to dismiss anyone because of obstinate adherence to papist abominations would have broken his heart, not so much because of the famine to which such a one would have been reduced, but because of the risk of damnation he would have to face after his death.

He said, as calmly as my father had spoken passionately, “The Reverend Duroy will now instruct you in the differences between the Roman cult and ours.” Raymond Duroy did not rise, and when he spoke nothing moved in his countenance other than his dark eyes and his mouth, his body remaining as immobile as if cut in marble. He made not the slightest gesture, not even to raise his hands from the arms of his chair to emphasize a point. But out of this iciness came a great fire, especially when Duroy denounced the practice of simony and the corruption of the Catholic priests.

“These priests,” he proclaimed, “have grown wealthy in the riches of this world and impoverished in spirit. They live among their earthly delights day and night. Their ministry is foul and spoilt with their greed. They refuse baptism without payment. They never bless a marriage without bleeding the poorest couples of their money. They never open the sepulchres to the dead except by charging for the grave. In sum, the priests have made a shopkeeper’s commerce out of the administration of the sacraments. What’s worse: through a great and terrible simony, they have bartered pardons and absolutions from sin! They sell indulgences! In this stinking rot of their corruption, it comes as no surprise that the Roman clergy has redirected to its own pleasures the tithes that princes and common men have offered for the poor and for the instruction of the people.”

Here Duroy paused, and my father made a gesture inviting our people to speak, which they were quick to do, so much did they approve of Duroy’s opening words.

“Miserly, for sure, they are,” murmured Faujanet, who remembered having been rejected by the diocese of Sarlat when he went there begging for crumbs.

“And so greedy, they’d shave an egg,” added Cabusse.

“I could tell you about a priest, and not far from here either, who, with his long rosary, has rustled a sol from more than one of his faithful.”

“I kn… kn… know him too,” confirmed Cockeyed Marsal.

Only Coulondre held his tongue, so much was silence his inveterate habit. But he was known to be little given to religion, not much taken with hearing Mass, and somewhat detached from the faith of his fathers because of his bitterness about losing an arm.

Cabusse was no more fervent than Coulondre, having a Gascon’s irreverence for priests. Overwhelmed as he was with the riches of this world—the le Breuil farm, his sheep and Cathau—he was not much concerned with those of the next. We knew, by way of my mother’s ex-chambermaid, what his prayers consisted of: in the morning as he stretched he would say, “Lord, your servant is getting up. Grant him a good day.” And the evening prayer, between yawns, “Lord, your servant is going to bed. Give him a good night with his wife.”

La Maligou and Barberine listened to all this without a word, being ashamed to speak in front of the men, but they exchanged a few whispered reflections and memories rehashed twenty times over concerning Pincers the priest—so named because some joker, passing by the presbytery and finding it empty, had thought to play a joke on the housekeeper by taking the pincers from beside the fireplace and placing them in her bed. But the joke had turned out to be on the priest since, while the pincers lay undiscovered in her bed, he railed for an entire month against his parishioners both in and out of the pulpit, believing himself the victim of theft.

“You’re so right,” said la Maligou. “A bigger lecher there never was. In confession and in the sacristy, he stares at the girls’ tits and gropes their arses.”

“And surely there’s no mother’s son in France,” said Barberine, “who’s a bigger drunkard. And for proof, at the funeral of poor old Petremol, just as they were lowering the body into the grave, and Pincers was mumbling his prayers for the dead, he saw Bellièvre, the smithy, in the front row of the mourners, and said to him in a loud and clear voice: ‘Bellièvre, seeing you there reminds me that you still owe me a barrel of wine. Remember to bring it tomorrow. Your salvation depends on it!’ After which, he went on with his prayers as if nothing had happened.”

When silence had returned, the Reverend Duroy began a clear exposition and resume of the forty articles of the Calvinist confession of faith, as established by the synod of 1559. He spoke with a kind of tranquil certainty and had the art of making the most thorny subjects accessible to the people and to children of all ages. Even today I can remember the way he explained to us the Huguenots’ interpretation of the Last Supper: “The Catholic priests,” he announced gravely and with vibrant indignation, “maintain the presence of the real body and blood of our Saviour in the bread and wine of the Communion. But that cannot be, and to claim such a thing is foolishness and falsehood. You must understand that the body and blood of the Saviour nourish the soul in the way that bread and wine feed the body. To understand it any other way is an imposture. How could Jesus Christ be up in heaven and down here in the stomachs of those who take Communion? In truth, the body of Our Lord is as far from the bread and wine as the farthest pinnacle of heaven is from the earth.”

To which, my father, raising his hand, added, “When Christ said, ‘Drink, this is my blood,’ and ‘Eat, this is my body,’ we must
understand it as a parable, and not literally, the way the papists do.” This idea—the ultimate blasphemy for a Roman priest—was well received by our audience who saw no malice in it and accepted it as common-sense truth. Nor was our household any more recalcitrant when the Reverend Duroy attacked the idea of the celibacy of priests. (“That’s such hypocrisy,” affirmed Jonas. “It’s for sure that Pincers is a lot less chaste than me in my cave.”) When Duroy talked about monastic vows, Cabusse pointed out with a chuckle that “monks are the lice of the people”. And when he came to indulgences, Faujanet declared that “at that rate only the rich will be saved”. On the subject of private confession, Barberine agreed that all they were doing was “letting Pincers in on the family secrets”.

On the other hand, Duroy’s attack on the cult of the Virgin and the saints was met with great astonishment and heavy resistance. He conducted his assault, in consequence, with the utmost tact and prudence: “According to the Scriptures,” he said, “Christ is the only mediator between God and man. Therefore, you must not pray to the Virgin or the saints to intercede with Christ, nor make a cult of any of them. We must respect the saints as so many heroes of the faith, but we refuse to worship them. In the same way, we honour Mary as the mother of Christ, but we refuse to worship her. The Word of God in his Holy Scripture is clear and indubitable. The only intercessor with God is Christ. Whoever strays from this rule falls into idolatry. The cult of Mary and the saints is only an abuse and a trick of Satan.”