by Iain Pears
And he would not, he said almost as an afterthought, move much farther south than Vaison itself. The rest of the province would have to fend for itself. Nor would he march to relieve Clermont.
By this stage, all artifice had been laid aside; windy words and compliments were abandoned. Rather two men of power were sounding each other out, each grappling with the will of the other, wishing to avoid failure.
“Clermont is vital; it must be saved,” Manlius said icily. “Relieve it, block Euric there, and the entire region will greet you as a savior.”
The king nodded. “I realize this, My Lord Bishop. But I also know full well that Euric is not a man to challenge lightly. I could, as you say, relieve Clermont. At the moment this is no great problem. He has committed a fraction of his men to the siege. But what then? He commands incomparably greater resources than I do. In order to ensure success, I would have to send every man I have there. And that would leave much more open to him. Let me put it plainly: I can save Clermont for a while or I can save your territories permanently. Not both.”
“I was sent here to find a guardian for the whole of Provence. Am I to go back and say that I have saved my own part of it, and am abandoning the rest to Euric?”
“I am afraid that is the choice you must make.”
The meeting ended there; Manlius needed to think. For the first time he wished he could pray as well. Later, as he lay on the bed in the accommodation the king had provided, he was scornful of his hesitation. Prayer, indeed. Even he, it seemed, was being corrupted by the weakness of the Christians. This was not a matter for God; this was a matter for himself. This was why he existed, to take decisions, to make choices.
It is hard to describe his mood as he lay there for so many hours. If not prayer, it was a form of contemplation, although of a fiercely active variety. He did not glory in his power to affect the destiny of so many people, that he held their fate in his hands, that his decision would mean so much. Nor did he fret about what others would think of him, wonder whether he would be considered a traitor if he did this, or weak if he did that. He considered what would be the best decision, and as he understood all too well, the choice was simple. Either part of Provence would be saved, consigned to the hands of a man who, although barbarian, had been educated at Rome, was tolerant of its religion, would respect its laws and enforce them justly, or none of it would be.
So he formulated the problem, simplifying his options by not considering alternatives. He could have raced back, thrown his all behind Felix, and taken the risk. His friend’s military skills were formidable; if he stripped all his estates and handed over every man to him, then perhaps he could win a victory that would reverberate through the world.
But that would mean exposing his own lands to depredation; it would mean there would be no one to prevent his labor abandoning their tasks and walking away. It would mean admitting the error of his own strategy, and undermining his own authority, which was desperately needed to maintain order. All for a possibility. Perhaps Felix could win a victory that had eluded emperors for half a century. But it was more likely he would fail, and achieve nothing but to bring the wrath of King Euric down on the whole region. He had said that, if all else failed, he would stand by his friend and they would die together. He had meant it. But all else had not yet failed. The choice was not so stark.
“No. But if you move quickly there will not be much. You must arrive with sufficient troops within a month. Otherwise opposition may coalesce.”
“And who might be the leader of it?”
Manlius thought for a moment, staring into the dead, empty grate. “A man called Felix,” he said eventually. “He is wedded to the Roman solution, and is liable to oppose this arrangement. He is popular, and holds large properties. He could mobilize a small army if you give him enough time.”
“We had better not do so, then,” said the king with a smile. “And it would be as well to make sure that he presents no danger afterwards either.”
“Handled properly he would be a valuable ally, and a good advisor. You have virtues enough to win his support, in time.”
Gundobad grunted. “I will be the judge of that,” he said. “And I will not take risks for your sake. Euric will take Clermont and will move east, as you say, and I must be impregnable by the time he does. I cannot afford to be distracted by internal opposition. The matter must be solved before I move, otherwise you will get no help from me.”
Manlius said no more. He left the king’s presence and went back to his quarters to reflect some more. He left for home the following morning.
Julien was not at all happy about turning into a courier for the Resistance; all his arguments against their activities were unanswered. But if he had not delivered them, then either Julia would have done so or the opportunity to get her out of the country would have been lost. And every time he handed over his package, he also delivered a message: When will she leave the country? Are you nearly ready? Each time the same reply came back: Soon. With a list of more names to go on more false papers. Each time he suppressed the feeling that nothing would ever get done. Bernard was his friend.
The paintings and prints were Bernard’s passport, which he carried with him to show to soldiers, militia, and police who might stop him, wondering why he was in a particular place at a particular time. Look, he would say, I am taking these to a potential client. Times are hard, but even so some people remain interested in art. What he did on these peregrinations no one truly knew; his biographer, who published a book on him in 1958, failed to discover much about his activities. The book alluded to events of importance without ever managing to pin down much, and thus perpetuated the air of mystery that had always been his style. His role was shadowy, using the aura of London’s approval to impose himself on the disparate groups who would have as cheerfully killed each other as the Germans. Persuading them to work together, pursue a common policy, giving neither too much nor too little to all the factions that sprouted up. Ensuring that none became too big or powerful, a need that required him, on occasion, to sow dissent and mistrust. He was not liked but, despite the fact that he had nothing except his own personality and a fitful advance knowledge of gold and guns dropped by aircraft on dark nights, he was feared and respected, in his element.
He settled in Nîmes, where he was unknown, and rented a small shop, which he opened as an art gallery. He did the job properly, and even began to enjoy it. He assembled enough paintings to put on little exhibitions, and invited members of the German army to private views. He gave speeches of welcome at parties, talking about the ability of art to overcome differences in politics. Clichés about the contrast between arts of peace and war dropped from his lips. It was cheeky of him; the paintings were not of the sort to appeal to the military mind, but he found the reputation he acquired more than useful. In public he was considered at best an apolitical merchant, solely interested in making money. At worst he was detestable as a collaborator on the make, going out of his way to make the occupiers feel at home. In between these opinions lay the space he needed to get on with his work.
Sometimes, though, he even sold something. One afternoon, a captain from the intelligence bureau in Nîmes, a man from Hamburg, a linguist who had heard only ten days previously that his wife and two children, his father and mother, had been killed in a bombing raid, came into the gallery. He had not been able to do his work analyzing signals picked up from the constant chatter of radios to the south, uncoded, terse remarks that, sometimes, could be made to reveal a glint of gold. He no longer thought it mattered; he knew the war was lost and suspected, for the first time, that he didn’t care much.
He’d been wandering the streets for more than an hour by the time he passed by the rue de la République, and came into Bernard’s little gallery because he wanted a distraction from his own mind, constantly churning over the same memories and thoughts.
He spent nearly an hour staring at the etchings, thoroughly worrying Bernard, who had never been deta
ined by any image for more than a minute. He thought initially the Gestapo was about to swoop down on him and knew there was nothing he could do about it: He was not so foolish that he kept a gun anywhere near him. Then he noticed the tears coming down the officer’s cheek, and took reassurance from the spark of light reflecting in the liquid as it ran through the stubble on his pallid face.
“Who are these by?” the officer asked eventually. “Who is he?”
“She,” he corrected. “An artist called Julia Bronsen.”
“They are magnificent.”
Bernard looked at them. Truth to tell, he had never really looked at them before, and saw nothing special now. But he knew his job. “Ah, yes. They are special, indeed.”
“I will buy them all. How much are they?”
Bernard gave an outrageous figure. The man looked disappointed, so Bernard lowered it, a little. He bought all eight.
“I would like to meet this woman,” he said as Bernard wrapped them up—in newspaper, it was all he had.
“Not possible,” Bernard said. “She lives a long way from here. Besides—”
“She would not want to meet me?”
“She is Jewish.”
The captain nodded. “Then at the least please convey to her my profound admiration for what she has achieved here.”
He bowed, with a little inclination of his head, and walked out of the shop. Julia was absurdly pleased when she heard the story.
THE ACCUSATIONS against Gersonides and his servant came just before the first soldier guarding the pope fell sick and died. Until then, all in the papal palace, its new but unfinished walls rapidly reinforced and barred to the world, had dared to believe that what could keep out men could keep out death itself. They had, after all, nothing else to put their faith in, and they could do little except hope and patrol the walls. The hope was misplaced, although the newness of the building—much of it not even complete or decorated—seems to have offered some protection; by the time the soldier fell, many thousands had already died in Avignon itself.
The charge was not leveled by Ceccani himself, of course; that would have been far too obvious. He merely indicated at the correct moment that he had believed the report the moment he had heard of it, and gained praise for his efficiency and vigilance. Rather, one of his palace creatures, a priest from a good family who hoped for advancement, leveled the charge, going to the palace seneschal. Again, the paper lay in the cardinal’s archive, and was read by Julien in Rome.
“I saw the Jewess pouring liquid from a phial into the well last night,” he said. “It is the well which provides water for His Holiness.”
It says much for the seneschal that, although a shiver of terror ran down his spine at the words, he still kept calm and tried to ensure that the correct procedure was followed. Even in such times, even for a Jew. He was not so much a good man, but he was a good soldier, and believed in order, correctly followed. This was fortunate, and for Cardinal de Deaux it was vital. Had the seneschal barked out orders then and there, the soldiers would have run to Gersonides’s chamber and killed him and Rebecca within minutes.
He sought an audience with Clement, to try once more to make him realize the size of the disaster sweeping the world. Not the numbers dead, but the effect it was having on the living.
“Daily, I get more and more reports; I hear of men and women, complete strangers, coupling in the streets, in full view of passersby. Husbands and wives abandoned, even sold to others. I hear of children thrown into the streets to starve, of men killed for no reason, of priests insulted and spat upon, of churches spurned. All authority and all law is crumbling, Holiness, and rather than bring men back to God, making them see their sins and repent, the church is thrusting them further away. It is a matter of urgency that order be restored and that a lead be given. All they are crying out for is direction. And you must give it; you must stamp your authority on this situation now.”
The pope wiped his brow of the sweat that prickled down it; he must, Ceccani thought, have lost a third of his weight by sweating in the past few weeks, sitting up in his tower and roasting himself like that. He looked warily at his cardinal; he did not like him, suspected him of constant intrigue, but knew also of his intelligence and diligence. Cardinal Ceccani wanted power, and perhaps even wanted to succeed him, of that there was no doubt. But it was also true that few others so deserved the office, or had such an elevated concern for its defense.
“And what am I to do, Ceccani? Offer a cure? Bring back the dead? Hold up my hand and bid this plague be gone? Prayers are fruitless, intercession has achieved nothing.”
“You must give hope, and understanding. And above all you must move swiftly to counter those who are using this situation to undermine the church. The friars, the mendicants, these people calling themselves the flagellants. They offer scourging and penance and the people flock to them, abandoning the church as they go. And they offer an explanation, the only one: that God has sent this plague as a punishment for the evils of mankind and of his church, which has led men astray.”
“Do they, by God! We will see about that.”
“No, Holiness. You cannot defeat these people. If you move against them, then the people will hate you the more; they care for the sick and offer them hope; the church at the moment is doing neither. You must not attack them, you must place yourself at their head.”
Clement looked at him impassively. “Go on. Tell me what you have in mind.”
And Ceccani sketched out the way the church could let them loose against the Jews and destroy them in the same way that it had devoured the heretical Cathars, and thrown back the Muslims from Jerusalem. Give the people a purpose, an opportunity to destroy their enemies, those who wished them ill. He saw the temptation of glory dancing in Clement’s eyes, reflected in the firelight, and knew he was halfway to his goal.
PART THREE
EVEN THOUGH an entire continent was engulfed by war and the south occupied, Julien paid little attention to the German presence until shortly after Bernard had come to see him and announced, somewhat prematurely, how he planned to take control of the region once the occupiers had gone. He always thought on a grand scale, his friend. Until then, the war had been an abstraction, whose reality was sensed only through the shortages of food, the new laws and decrees, the air of despondency that could be sensed in the wind and in the expressions of men as they passed by. The emptiness of the streets, the fact that even a single vehicle attracted attention when before streams of them went unnoticed.
And, of course, through the absence of those people who vanished, taken away to be offered as sacrifices to placate the powers in the north. The foreigners, some Jews, men drafted in to feed the factories of Germany with manpower, others who fled to the hills to avoid being taken or to join the Resistance. The war was a collection of absences but had no real physical presence for him until the day a single truck rumbled into the main street of Vaison, stopped, and the driver got out. What the Germans called Operation Anton, the occupation of Southern France, had been under way since the previous November, but demarcation disputes with Italy over who was to control the area east of the Rhône meant troops generally passed through on their way to the coast. The hilly land east of the Rhône was of no great military importance; it was not the way any invading troops landing in the south would come, if they had any sense.
It was a Saturday morning and the driver was lost. Throughout history, a good general has been he who knows where his army is; a great one he who can say with some assurance where it will be tomorrow. In the case of this soldier, this one-man occupying force, he had been told to join a convoy going to Marseille. But no one had told him where the assembly point was. He had waited for three days, then set out from Lyon on his own to try to catch up.
He was fresh from school; had been in the army only twelve weeks and had not one iota of military fervor in his body. He had hoped desperately for a posting far away from the slightest hint of any fighting, and had used
what small influence he possessed—he came from a military family that, collectively, was ashamed of him—to join a unit defending a small island off the Brittany coast, spending his days fishing while hoping that the might of the Allied powers would decide it had better things to do than assault an island with a population of 278 people.
But much of the German army moved south into the previously unoccupied zone, and the young man could only reassure himself that things might have been worse: He could have been dispatched to the eastern front instead. He was swept up in the vast redeployment and got lost as he drove through the night, hoping to find someone—anyone at all—who could tell him where he was, where he should be. He came to Vaison, far from the road he should have been on, and got out to ask directions. He looked around him with an air of perplexity on his face. He was too innocent to wonder whether he should have been afraid, all alone in this town, with no one knowing where he was, driving a truck full of food that the inhabitants would have eaten with the greatest pleasure.
Julien saw him as he stood there, blinking in the bright early sunlight. The youth looked at him, wondering whether he was a person to ask for directions, then walked into a shop. Julien watched him waving his arms as people do when they cannot speak well. He pointed, first in one direction, then in another; the shopkeeper pointed as well. He pointed to some bread and was given it, tried to give some money in exchange, but the shopkeeper waved him away, would not take it. An ambiguous gesture, not friendliness, not disdain, a cautious mixture of both that acknowledged the occupier while also taking account of the news that the fortunes of war were swinging, that the air of invincibility was fading. He mentioned the incident to Julia later: hardly the embodiment of military prowess, he said. Difficult to imagine that the defeat of France had been encompassed by such a figure.
