The Brethren (5 page)

“We’ll consider it,” answered Sauveterre.

“In the quarry,” continued Jonas, “I discovered a very deep cave. If you’d be so good as to furnish me a mattress of chestnut leaves, I’ll live there summer and winter, so as not to lose time walking back and forth that would be better spent in my work. Anyway, who would guard my cut stone if I don’t live where I work?”

Thus did Jonas give account of himself on the day he arrived, and so he is still today: more worried about his masters’ interests than his own, having entered Mespech the way others enter a monastery. Not that our stonecutter was without a taste for life, or didn’t enjoy a bottle at our Sunday table, a game or a story by the evening fire—nor was he unresponsive when a sorceress came to tempt him in his cave—but that is a story for another time.

My mother was five months pregnant with my elder brother when La Boétie returned from the capital, on 21st April 1547, with all manner of stories concerning the death of François I. Our police lieutenant had gone up to Paris with a large escort in order to solicit the king’s favour regarding some matter of great importance to him, but which my father neglected to explain in the
Book of Reason
, although he wrote down everything else there: meetings, conversations, as well as the prices of things. I read there, for example, that on the preceding Saturday, my father journeyed to Sarlat to buy a hundred pins for my mother (five sols), shoes for Cabusse (five sols, two deniers) and shoes for his pony (two sols), and that he enjoyed “an excellent repast” at the Auberge de la Rigaudie for eight sols.

I quote this entry because it contrasts so dramatically with what follows. La Boétie found a great to-do at the court, sad faces and hopeful ones mingling together—the former all too obvious, the latter hypocritically disguised—none, however, sincere, except for the real suffering of the dauphin and the despair of Madame d’Étampes, the
king’s favourite, who was already packing her bags. As for the king himself, whom La Boétie only glimpsed from afar, he seemed much changed, his face thinned greatly, his body bent and his movements agonizingly slowed.

“Monsieur de La Boétie,” said Siorac, “allow me to interrupt you. My brother is laid up in his room, in some distress from an old leg wound. Would you be willing to continue this narrative in his tower chambers? He would be greatly chagrined to have missed your story.”

The east tower to which Siorac referred is reached by a winding staircase set in a smaller adjoining tower. Our chapel occupies the ground floor of this tower, Sauveterre’s rooms the first. The room adjoining his bedroom is a small study, where our uncle spends much of his time; the chimney draws well and the window looks out onto the courtyard so that Sauveterre can keep an eye on the comings and goings of our servants. “’Tis nothing serious, Lieutenant,” grimaced Sauveterre to his guest, unable to rise to greet him, “my leg cramps up once or twice a month and all will be well tomorrow.”

“So I will hope with all my heart,” answered La Boétie, settling himself with a groan. “My own posterior is sore enough from all the riding I have just done, which has brought me naught but vexation. I had scarcely arrived at court when the king decided to move. Despite his deplorable health, he seems unable to stay in one place. You’d think he felt death stealing about him, given his haste to flee from one chateau to the next: from Saint-Germain to la Muette, from la Muette to Villepreux-lès-Clayes, then on to Dampierre, to Limours, to Rochefort-en-Yvelines… All I could do was follow him about, unable to approach him, paying good money for my escort’s lodgings to all the rascally innkeepers of the royal territories who charge two sols a day just for hay for the horses! What’s more, they mock my guards’ speech, which is as good as any man of theirs.”

“Ah, to be sure,” agreed Sauveterre. “Our speech is the purer!”

“At Rochefort-en-Yvelines I had a more hopeful moment,” La Boétie continued. “The king was feeling better and mounted his horse to go hunting three days in a row. After which he ate and drank to excess as usual.”

“He went riding with an abscess!” exclaimed Siorac. “What madness!”

“Perhaps,” said La Boétie naively, “the king hoped the ride would drain the abscess. But after three days he was much the worse off and beset by a running fever. He ordered them to bring him to Rambouillet where, trying to deny the gravity of his illness, he said he wanted to ‘take his pleasure in hunting and birding’. On 21st March I was finally admitted to the Château de Rambouillet, only to learn that they were operating on the king. Afterwards, he sank into the slow pangs of death. On 30th March the dauphin asked for his benediction, and while the king was giving it, the dauphin fainted on his bed and the king held him as closely as though he would die if he let go of him.

“Finally they led the dauphin Henri away into the dauphine’s room where he threw himself face down on the bed with his boots on, stricken with grief. Catherine de’ Medici, seeing her husband in this state, fell to the floor weeping and disconsolate. François de Guise, taking scarce more note of her than of his future king, paced stiffly back and forth in the room, a superb defiance on his face, his heels ringing on the floorboards. Diane de Poitiers, Henri’s mistress, sat stiffly nearby, triumphant and smiling. Guise stopped his pacing long enough to address her, and, with a gesture in the direction of the king’s room, sneered derisively, ‘He’s leaving us, the old fop!’”

“Did you get this incredible story on good authority?” stammered Siorac. “So much insolence towards his dying master? Is it possible?”

“I have it from an excellent source,” replied La Boétie, somewhat testily, “and I can also assure you that the king, who was entirely in
possession of his wits when he confessed, declared out loud—this has been confirmed by many different people—that he ‘had no remorse on his conscience, never having done any injustice to anyone in this world’.”

Sauveterre started violently in his chair. “Has he forgotten the massacres of the Vaudois of Luberon? Mérindol and Cabrières seemed to have slipped his mind!” he growled. “But he must be counting on Purgatory to purge him of these venial sins!” He pronounced “Purgatory” with a scornful irony that seemed to put La Boétie ill at ease.

“Monsieur de La Boétie,” Siorac said hastily, “do you think Diane still holds sway over the new king? After all, Henri is twenty-eight, she is already forty-eight and the younger lionesses of the court might yet steal her prey.”

“Ah, but Diane is still a beauty,” replied La Boétie, happy to find himself on more familiar ground. “I can’t guarantee the face, which shows a few cracks here and there despite all her artifices, but her body is superb, and the young king gawks at her like the day she deflowered him. Do you know that after dinner every night, he visits her to tell her of the day’s affairs of state and sits on her lap? On her lap, I tell you! He plays her songs on the guitar, interrupting himself to exclaim to the constable as he fondles her breasts: ‘Look, Montmorency, what a figure she cuts!’ In truth, the new king is a gawking child. He looks at Diane as if he were completely surprised by her friendship. She’ll do with him whatever she pleases.”

“And whatever pleases Guise, the clergy and Montmorency,” added Sauveterre sombrely. “Well, so much for peace in the kingdom of France. We are going to witness a very Spanish Inquisition in our poor country, with endless tortures.”

“So I fear,” agreed La Boétie, adding after a moment’s reflection, “’Tis neither my duty nor my inclination to question your religious
practices, but aren’t you somewhat imprudent? The vicar general complains that he never sees you at Mass in Sarlat any more.”

“For my part, I must complain that the 500 livres we donated to the Church expressly for the maimed veterans of this parish when we purchased Mespech have never found their way into their hands.”

“I like you too well to echo these foolhardy words to anyone,” cautioned La Boétie. “You’d never be forgiven.”

“But truth be told,” rejoined Siorac, whose smile lit up his eyes, “you may reassure the vicar general that we hear Mass every Sunday right here, thanks to the opening in the wall that communicates with the chapel beneath us in this very tower. We donate five sols every Sunday to the curate of Marcuays so that he will say Mass at noon every Sabbath. Madame de Siorac, the children and all our servants attend Mass in the chapel, and we are able to listen from this study where my brother is laid up, as you know, by his war wounds.”

Sauveterre was only half mistaken. Henri II (or rather those who controlled his life, for he was only a plaything in their hands) did not succeed in creating a Spanish-style Inquisition in France, despite the Pope’s pleas for one: the resistance of the great bodies of state was too fierce. But he multiplied the edicts and created within the Paris parliament the sinister
chambre ardente
, which imprisoned a great number of the reformed in the Conciergerie fortress before dragging them to their execution at the place Maubert. There they were tied to hastily erected stakes and burnt alive in great fires, their bodies consumed and reduced to ashes. I find in one of my father’s entries in the
Book of Reason
of about this date an echo of the ongoing discussion between the two brothers as to whether they should openly declare their support for the Reformation. Sauveterre felt that the times required that they sign their faith in blood. Siorac
held, on the contrary, that in making such a declaration during a period of persecution they would merely add to the list of martyrs without contributing in any way to the cause. It was much better, in his view, to wait until the party of the Huguenots had gained enough strength in the region and in the kingdom to allow some hope of vanquishing their enemies.

If Sauveterre had been left to his own devices, he would have taken up his cross without further ado, and run headlong to his own death, so great was his dislike of dissimulation, and so violent was his agitation at seeing the errors of the papists (as he called them) gain credence throughout the land. If he restrained himself, it was not out of any fear of the stake—his austere management of the wealth of Mespech was ample proof of his disdain for this world—but rather out of fear of making his way alone, and without his beloved brother, to the felicities of eternal life. I read in a touching marginal note added by Sauveterre to my father’s entry of 12th June 1552, “I arose today at five o’clock and looked out of my window at the pure sky and the sun shining on the foliage, the birds singing by the thousands. And yet, what is all of this compared to the happiness and the glory we will know in Our Lord when we have left our mortal remains here below? Oh, Jean, how you do delay! Of course I know that you would feel a deep sadness in leaving behind Mespech and your family, but think only what measure of thing you leave behind in comparison to what you will receive in the life hereafter.”

To which my father wrote in reply on the following day: “We did not take Mespech from the mouth of the wolf only to abandon it to the wolf cubs. The same goes for my wife and beloved children, François and Pierre.” This is the first time that I am mentioned by name in the
Book of Reason
, along with my elder brother.

Continuing their dialogue on paper, my father later entered an argument which must have touched Sauveterre even more deeply:
“It is written in the Holy Book: ‘If thou obeyst the voice of the Lord, blessed will be the offspring of thy cattle, blessed thy fruits and thy honey.’ Certainly, in this respect, we have no reason to complain of Mespech. Is this not the proof that our house is seen as the house of God, since He makes us to prosper in this world, as is promised in the Scriptures? Must we think of destroying everything He has built and ourselves destroy the roof over our heads, our descendants, our servants and our flocks, giving ourselves to the stake and Mespech to the papists? No, my brother, we owe the truth in our hearts only to God, whereas to the enemies of God that we have encountered thus far we owe only ruses and lies: to the Devil go the fruits of the Devil…”

And so, every Sunday, while the curate of Marcuays said Mass to Isabelle de Siorac and to our servants in the chapel on the ground floor of the east tower, the two brothers, deaf to the Latin intonations of the Mass filtering through the grate from below, softly chanted the Psalms of David in their first-floor library.

In the midst of the many benedictions which the Lord rained down on Mespech, there were nevertheless a few afflictions, and among these were the premature deaths of three children, whose names are entered in the
Book of Reason
. But I must guard against any implication that these were punishments from on high. For there was no family in France of this century exempt from such grief, and some mourned more than half of the children they brought into this world.

In entries in the
Book of Reason
dated a few months before my birth, I read repeated notes from Sauveterre, “I pray for you, Jean,” which of course excited my curiosity, especially since my father never answered them. What sickness did Jean de Siorac have that should provoke his brother’s repeated prayers, and what sudden attack of ingratitude kept my father from ever thanking his brother for these orisons?

I must confess here what I but guessed during my childhood, and only fully understood much later. Between my father and my mother, almost from the first day of their marriage, there raged a small war of religion, which, whether latent or openly engaged, knew no respite. For Isabelle not only never consented to renounce the cult of her fathers, but also, on the strength of a thoughtless agreement concluded with Jean de Siorac before their marriage, declared her intention to raise her children according to the Catholic rites. When it was my turn to be born, my father wanted to give me a biblical name. Isabelle adamantly refused. Hardly had I uttered my first cry in this vale of tears when Barberine was sent to fetch the curate and she maliciously had me baptized Pierre, since upon this rock His Church had been built.

Doubtless she had other reasons for her scornful fury, since, but a short week after my own arrival, a girl in Taniès gave birth to a son whom Jean de Siorac named Samson, signifying that, by the grace of God, this lad would be bigger and stronger than any of his sons baptized in the Catholic faith. Which turned out to be true for my brother François, but not for me.