The Brotherhood of Book Hunters (2 page)

 

Although already quite drunk, François refrained from leaping out of his chair and dancing a bourrée around the table. He lowered his eyes, feigning gratitude and humility, aware only of the embroidered tablecloth, the food getting cold on the plates, the bishop's chest swelling the scarlet cross with each breath. He knew how much Guillaume Chartier hated him. And envied him. For of the two of them in this jail, it was François who was truly free, with no ties, and always had been.

Chartier put down his glass and abruptly took his leave. His alb floated for a moment in the doorway before vanishing into the gloom. It seemed to François that he must have been dreaming. Was he really going to cheat the gallows? Could he trust the word of a scheming churchman? He had to stay on his guard. But that copious meal had been worth making a pact with the devil himself for.

What remained of the stew swam at the bottom of the meat terrine, already lukewarm. The candles were gradually going out. François grabbed the opportunity to filch the bread knife and two silver spoons, which he hid beneath his rags. Still standing in the doorway, the jailer yawned. Outside, a lazy fog rose above the ramparts. The crenellations, freed of their veil of frost, stood out clearly. The first crows could be heard cawing on the roof of the keep. In the distance, bells pealed for matins.

François Villon had not yet written his last ballad.

T
he door of the tavern opened suddenly, blown inwards by a gust of wind. Spray and hail crashed onto the flagstones, sprinkling the sawdust and the straw. The dogs growled, the drinkers bellowed, the cats threw themselves under the tables. Their shadows swayed in the red light of the newly fanned flames of the hearth. Threats and curses rang out. Framed in the doorway, dripping with rain, a man stood, silhouetted against the whiteness of the hail. He was motionless for a moment, ignoring the tumult. A black velvet cloak floated around his shoulders like beating wings. Only two things were visible on this untimely specter: a wan smile and, below it, the milky reflection of a knife.

At the far end of the room, his back turned, another man smiled and seized a pitcher and a glass. An ink-dark, sharp-smelling wine gushed from the porcelain spout.

“Good evening, Master Colin.”

Colin de Cayeux sat down opposite his friend. Icy water dripped from his greatcoat. He seized the glass, drained it in one go, then sat back to take stock. François let himself be examined at leisure. After all these months of solitude, it warmed him to be scrutinized in this way by his companion. Putting his glass down gently on the table, François savored this moment of friendship in silence. His gaze moved along the grain of the wood, sailing down the rivers it traced on the map of an unknown country. On it he made out the roads where Colin and he had lain in ambush, the forests where they had hidden when the mounted constabulary was hot on their heels, the villages with their dark hovels where Marion, Margot, and Cunégonde had waited for them. Every grease stain was an island, every drop of wine a lake beside a manor house. Tavern tables like this had accompanied François on all his wanderings. They had comforted and inspired him, welcoming his joys and sorrows, listening to his grievances, unflinchingly accepting the cuts he loved to make in them with his knife. Their cracks spoke a mysterious language. They breathed words and phrases in your ear. All it then took was the music of a few rhymes to reveal their secret. Not to mention the fact that their solid texture made them excellent desks.

Colin looked at his friend without saying a word. He was used to these silences, these moments when François left him, lost in a strange conversation with the angels. Or with his own demon. He did not hold it against him. François had a wandering soul.

Outside, the storm had subsided. Work resumed, even though it was the middle of the night. Colin heard the dull thuds of the mallets, the creak and rasp of the pulleys, the muffled yells of the foremen, the wailing of the donkeys as they were unloaded, the clerks screaming orders in Venetian, in Low German, in Arabic. The Fair of Lyons would open at dawn, come what may.

“You worry me, François. I thought you were going to regale everyone with a well-turned lament. The students are surprised at your silence. They were expecting fine words from your prison cell, a few rebellious verses. But you haven't stirred, haven't complained . . . ”

“The students already have new songs. The booksellers have wiped my name from their inventories.”

“You're wrong, François. The taverns echo to your verses. Your poetry is sold everywhere on the sly. It is whispered in the corridors at court. It is recited in literary circles. Even the judges delight in it!”

Colin opened his pouch, took out a piece of dry sausage, and cut it into thin slices with his knife. François chewed on it, all the while following the comings and goings of a servingwoman, dreaming of a companion for his night. A wrinkled breast hung over the woman's filthy apron.

“I'm well past thirty-two, my dear Colin. All that remains of my loves and my duels are the scars. Of the money I robbed, not even a crown is left . . . ”

Colin knew his friend too well to fall for this declaration.

“But now I have this!”

François held out the list of works chosen by Chartier to arouse the envy of Johann Fust and persuade him to put his presses at the service of the French court. These volumes came from the royal archives as well as the secret collections of the diocese of Paris. The descriptions of them were deliberately succinct, so that only the initiated could spot their inestimable value. Colin skimmed through the tedious inventory, seeing nothing in it to justify such excitement.

“Another swig?”

François filled the glasses then lifted his high in triumph, like a chalice. Colin threw an embarrassed glance at the neighboring tables. It was easy to spot the foreigners who had come for the Fair, dressed in thickly stitched doublets or woolen cloaks, wearing hoods and hats with preposterous shapes. Whether they came from Flanders or Saragossa, whether they were highwaymen, clerics or merchants, each had a club or a knife, in full view, at their sides. Other weapons were barely concealed beneath their cloaks or inside the legs of their boots. Ill at ease, the locals shrank away, whispering in patois, looking at these strangers out of the corners of their eyes. Only the innkeeper was affable, jovially pocketing the coin of different realms. A maid swayed her hips between the tables, trying to tempt the customers. Colin drank without much conviction, again looking closely at the sheet of parchment. François hit the table with his fist and pointed to the crowded room.

“It's their future you hold in your hands, brigand!”

 

The two men spent the night drinking. François tried to make Colin understand what was truly at stake in this mission, but in vain. Colin could not see how this list of books could change the fate of all these people, these peasants and shopkeepers and soldiers of fortune. Much as he examined the inventory and deciphered the titles, it was no good. What confused him all the more was that François kept telling him that it was not the texts that mattered. They had been chosen by Chartier, and by the king, to assuage their ambitions of the moment. No, it was the books themselves, as objects of paper or animal hide, that constituted an extraordinary arsenal. But for what war?

The tavern gradually emptied. Colin meekly received his final instructions from François, then went out to face the rain. As he closed the door behind him, he glimpsed his crony busily making eyes at the servingwoman, who was laughing crazily.

 

The market square was waking up, warmly wrapped in the thick mist of morning. Sounds, sparse and timid at first, pierced the silence: little bells dancing on the necks of animals, gravel crunching beneath the wheels of the carts, baubles and canvases shaken by the wind. The men, still numb, did not speak, staring with heavy eyes at the few patches of color: red ribbon, green hat, purple cloth. Hawkers and merchants strode in dozens down the alleys leading to the fairground. Soon, they roused workers and mules, mercenaries and bodyguards. Soon, the whine of haggling and the clink of coins echoed on all sides. That morning, a new era began, an era in which everything would be negotiable.

The wooden trestles creaked beneath the weight of the crates and jars. The air was heavy with the scent of spices and perfume and dye and the fumes of wine. Colin was assailed by touts pulling his arm, in no way abashed by his huge frame. He hurried on, cutting through the stream of onlookers, slipping between the carpets and fabrics hanging from the awnings. In the central aisle, he spotted a stand whose sober tones were out of place in the gaily-colored swirl of silks. There, customers and sellers alike argued in low voices, heedless of the cries and laughter all around. A discreet sign announced in Gothic lettering: “Johann Fust and Pierre Schoeffer, printers and booksellers.” Rolls of parchment and leather-bound volumes were heaped up willy-nilly on shelves of rough and hastily varnished wood.

At the back, behind the counter, a slender fellow wearing gentlemen's attire, although moth-eaten and patched, was putting down a box filled with books at the feet of an old man with a well-groomed beard. The old man immediately plunged his thin hands into the box, skillfully searching and sorting. Then, with a disillusioned expression, he stood up again and stated his price. The squire refused, visibly offended. The old man would not budge. To cut short the performance, he untied a velvet purse, knowing that a feudal lord in debt would not long resist the sight of a handful of silver coins. Crestfallen, the noble pocketed the sum without deigning to count it and quickly turned on his heels, trying to regain the haughty air proper to his station.

Colin went closer. It was the first time he had approached the man he had been watching for months. With a hesitant hand, he held out his list. The old merchant first glanced negligently at it. Then, genuinely taken aback, he looked at Colin for some time, incredulous.

 

With the few crowns allocated by Guillaume Chartier, François bought new clothes: two pairs of britches, two shirts, and a pelisse lined with otter skin, all in a dull gray that would not show the dirt for a long time. Splendid hats hung from the ceiling, but much as the shopkeeper insisted, François would not abandon his old headgear. It was a piece of crumpled felt, of an undefined color that might once have been an elegant green, the brim of which was turned up in three sections. This curious tricorn had escaped many trials and tribulations. Each of its folds, like a familiar wrinkle, evoked a memory. François refused to part with it. It was the only possession that still tied him to his past. He clung to it like a rope.

Before going back, he paid for a neck-length haircut, a close shave, and a clumsy plastering of his dental cavities. The barber cursed the great fair, which was stealing his customers with all its sales patter. There were even quack doctors there who claimed to be able to patch up teeth better than he could!

Back at the tavern, François climbed the stairs to the attic, a small, meagerly furnished, musty-smelling room. Colin was waiting for him, sitting on a stool. François tapped him on the shoulder, then went and took his pouch from under the bed. The books were all there. Now all they could do was wait.

 

Toward noon, François heard heavy steps growing louder as they approached, interspersed now and again by imperious knocks with a cane. Colin stood up even before the pommel struck the mildewed wood of the door. Doing his best to appear polite, he gave a kind of bow and motioned the visitor to the only chair that had a back.

“Fust. Johann Fust. Silversmith and printer in Mayence.”

François, sitting cross-legged on a straw mattress, was less welcoming. He studied the newcomer with a suspicious air. The old man's venerable countenance, his haughty German demeanor, his impeccably correct clothes did nothing to set his mind at rest. Fust stared back at him, momentarily thrown by his host's less than winning appearance. He even found him insolent and crafty. The fellow was clearly suffering from a terrible hangover. In any case, neither the imposing brute who was standing with his back to the door nor this none too clean vagabond intimidated the old printer. This wasn't the first time he had dealt with receivers of stolen goods. They were of all kinds: defrocked priests, sons of good families who had fallen into debt, soldiers returning from the wars. The best books often met with the saddest fate, abandoned by simpletons surprised that anyone should waste time reading them, let alone want to acquire them for cash. Thus it was that knowledge circulated and spread, through theft, bankruptcy, and inheritance. Much to the delight of booksellers.

François knew perfectly well that his guest sensed a great opportunity. Nevertheless, he played the game according to the rules, letting Fust believe that he was the craftier of the two or, at least, the more expert. François had never flaunted his knowledge, often taking judges and university masters by surprise. He had learned never to use his erudition as a foil, but to conceal it beneath the appearance of a fool, and use it only at the right moment, like a secret weapon. He would throw a judicious quotation at an eminent rival as you throw a knife at a straw target, casually but going straight for the middle. And always catching him unawares. It was not his reading that had taught him this technique, but the many street fights he had been in, against adversaries for whom, unlike courtiers and clerics, he felt respect.

Fust, though, would not let himself be overawed—which made François all the better disposed toward him. The old man took his seat with ease, nonchalantly placed his cane on the floor, and calmly removed his mittens. On his finger, as a counterpoint to his otherwise austere attire, he wore a glittering ring with a ruby set in it as a cabochon. The matte gold of the ring was inscribed with a dragon, its tiny rhinestone eyes glittering brightly, a thread of flashing enamel spurting from its open mouth. Its claws held the central gem in a tight grip.