City of Wisdom and Blood

by Robert Merle

  “The Mangane wench.”

  “Pestilence! Do you run after satanic skirts too? ’Sblood! There are flames and then there are flames and this one could really burn you!”

  But I didn’t feel like laughing. “I’ve heard tell,” I said gravely, looking him straight in the eye, “that they’ve put her on trial. And since this trial concerns me to some extent, and thinking perhaps that her testimony might be less of a secret to you than to me, I thought I might ask you to shed some light on what’s happening, if you wouldn’t mind sharing what you know.”

  “Aha!” exclaimed Fogacer, and he began silently pacing back and forth (though his room was hardly wide enough to allow it) glancing at me from time to time, but looking very preoccupied and circumspect. “Pierre,” he said finally, “what makes you think I’d know more about these proceedings than you?”

  I was ready for this question with an answer that wasn’t entirely true, since I didn’t want to scare Fogacer by repeating what Cossolat had told me. “On carnival day, you ripped off the nasty poem that was pinned to the effigy of the Présidial judge.”

  “Ah, so that’s it!” he sighed, sitting down, greatly relieved. “What can I say? I don’t like people to be defamed. As for the judge,” he added nonchalantly, “it’s true I know him slightly.”

  I had to admire this “slightly”, but I remained silent.

  “Well, what do you want to know?”

  “If my name has come up in this business.”

  “Aha!” said Fogacer. “So that’s it! Well, Siorac, so far, you’ve not been named, but you have been described.”

  “And was I recognized in this description?”

  “Not by the Présidial judge. But I recognized you immediately, for I know you all too well and I know that you’re strong, high-handed and impetuous. Of course, I also recognized both Merdanson and Carajac by their large, powerful frames.”

  “Fogacer,” I stammered, my throat tightening into a knot, “did you tell Saporta?”

  “I had to. But he declared that he wouldn’t throw any of you out of the college unless you were condemned by the Présidial court. And he’s in a difficult position, since he recently accepted the gift of a skeleton without knowing where it came from.” And at that he began to laugh so hard he got tears in his eyes at the thought that Saporta would be accused of trafficking in cadavers. But since I wasn’t able to share the joke, being up to my ears in this whole business, I brought Fogacer back to the subject at hand:

  “Fogacer, what do you think about the Mangane wench?”

  “It’s the trial that produced the witch, not the other way around. If you torture a poor wench to make her confess she fornicated with the Devil, you can be sure she’ll say so.”

  “So you don’t think she’s in possession of supernatural powers?”

  “In my view, no. Not her any more than her entire family, or all of the so-called sorcerers in France and Navarre put together.”

  “And yet,” I ventured as my mouth went dry, “when a witch does the curse of the knot and throws a coin on the ground, the coin disappears. Hasn’t the Devil taken it?”

  “Oh, my poor, naive friend! That’s such a carnival trick. Like peas under moving thimbles! She throws the coin on the ground so you’ll hear it and then quickly picks it up. So you can look for it all you want. Why do you think they use a coin, if not to strike terror into you when you can’t find it, having heard it fall?”

  “But where did you hear this, Fogacer?” I asked, gaping.

  “The Présidial judge is in the habit, when he arrests a witch, to put a false witch in jail with her to get her talking.”

  “So it’s all a fraud?”

  “Of course!”

  “And our judges know this, but burn them at the stake?”

  “Because the judges, or at least our judges, consider that such fraud is itself diabolical. In their view, playing at sorcery is every bit as damnable as practising it. For sorcery disrupts the order of the world, adoring Satan and not God.”

  This provided me much food for thought and I began to believe—as Joyeuse would say—that I had knotted myself. But this was merely a passing thought since I had many more fish to fry and these were more sharks than minnows.

  “What about Cabassus?” I asked.

  “Ah, Cabassus!” he replied. “Since the Mangane wench named him, the Présidial judge subpoenaed him, but he recused himself, claiming that as a priest, he fell under the jurisdiction of his bishop.”

  “Well, that’s very good!”

  “It’s very bad! For the Présidial court demanded that the bishop bring Cabassus to trial and since the bishop is not anxious to burn one of his priests, even so bad a one as Cabassus, he’s charged his canons to examine the case.”

  “And if they lock Cabassus in an ecclesiastical jail, will they torture him?”

  “I don’t know, Siorac,” replied Fogacer looking me in the eye, “but if they do, he’ll name you, and you’ll have to flee.”

  “Ah,” I thought, “if there’s still time!” And seeing my discomfiture, Fogacer tried to comfort me, and I left having more confidence in his friendship than I had in my future. When I got back to my room, I slept but fitfully, even if it was for different reasons than the previous nights, for my head seemed very uneasy on my shoulders.

  The entire day Tuesday was spent in the greatest distress, terrified and anxious as I was at the idea of dishonouring my father by being beheaded in public for having profaned a grave—and of my two companions, not being noblemen, being hanged high on a scaffold, which is a terrible death, as Espoumel had explained. Oh, reader! What torment and grief I was experiencing in my sixteenth year! Although I’d always believed my life would be a bed of roses, I now felt I was lying in a briar patch, sad and mournful, horrified by my own behaviour, and overwhelmed with misery. As soon as I got back to my room, I began crying and ruminating on my fate, trying to pray to God. I, who was so proud of my body, had made it my idol for all the pleasures it provided me, being uncommonly proud of its vigour, its gallantry and its amorous appetites, and delighted that wenches loved me as much for my body as I loved them for theirs. Oh, Lord! To lose this beautiful and good flesh so quickly and so soon in the bloom of my youth, almost without having had time to live! That was the nearly unbearable and worst suffering I could imagine—even worse than the pain of death itself.

  I had to force myself on this Tuesday to go to listen to the private lectures given in the rue du Bout-du-monde by Chancellor Saporta, who loved to look at me from time to time, given the ardour I displayed in listening to him. But that morning, I noticed to my despair that he didn’t look my way once, even though I was in the first row and listened to him with my usual fervour. Not once did he condescend to notice my presence. I had the sinister impression from this behaviour that Saporta had already expelled me from the college and from the company of the living. Of course, I understood that he was angry and disappointed that I was going to tarnish the reputation of the school by the trial. But not one single look at me, his own son: this was almost more than I could endure. I stopped listening, laid my pen down on my now useless writing desk, studied the ground in front of me and imagined my burial: rotting, cold and forgotten in the shadows of the tomb, far from the Provençal sun, my head separated from my body to the great shame of my family.

  When the lecture was over, I caught sight of Merdanson and Carajac, both pale and crestfallen, their powerful shoulders sagging. I was seized with even greater remorse that I should have dragged them into this calamitous adventure, and I went up to them and proposed that we meet at noon at the Three Kings. From the mournful way they responded, I understood that the gibbet was haunting them every bit as much as I was obsessed with the executioner’s block where I’d lay my head.

  The hostess at the Three Kings was all smiles and welcomed me warmly, which first comforted me, but then annoyed me a bit since I owed her smiles to the ten écus I’d paid for them. She did, however, agree
to allow me the use of her little cabinet, which was normally reserved for people richer than I. As I entered it, Merdanson and Carajac arrived right behind me. I ordered roast meat and three flagons, one for each, hoping to cheer them up—and myself as well—and recover a little bit of our joie de vivre. They’d learnt that the Mangane girl had been imprisoned, but didn’t know that she’d named Cabassus and that he now risked death, so when I told them this news, they became so terrified that Merdanson started talking about fleeing Montpellier immediately without any more discussion.

  We argued bitterly, Carajac for and I against this idea, and I was most unhappy to see them so resentful of my opposition, not that they openly reproached me for dragging them into such a sinkhole with no help in sight, but I could sense that this was on the tips of their tongues and rather wished they could just say it outright.

  This is how things were, bitter and growing worse by the minute, given their mounting terror, when there was a knock at the door. It was Cossolat.

  When he saw him, Merdanson paled and rose as if to flee, and Carajac, too, looked wildly for some way to escape.

  “Monsieur,” choked Merdanson, “are you here to arrest me?”

  “I don’t know, young man, who are you?” replied Cossolat half serious, half in mirth, his eyes shining malevolently. “And you, my friend,” he said to Carajac, “what’s your name? Given the description the Mangane wench provided, I think I could guess.” And, as my two companions just stood there stupidly staring at him, he continued, “I would have guessed it, even if your question, which was really stupid, wasn’t enough to incriminate you.” This was said with such authority that my two friends sat down again, bristling at being called stupid, yet somehow relieved that Cossolat seemed more jocular than menacing.

  “Monsieur de Siorac,” said Cossolat, “if I understand correctly, I may speak of your affairs in front of your friends. They have the same interest as you in learning of what’s transpired.”

  “Monsieur,” burst in Merdanson without giving me time to respond, “should we flee the town?”

  “Why on earth do you keep accusing yourself?” laughed Cossolat. “You’re too wet behind the ears to appear before a judge.”

  “Monsieur,” said Carajac with some irritation, “don’t make fun of us. You’re a Huguenot as we are. Answer us: should we run?”

  “Young man,” growled Cossolat, raising his voice, “I’ll make fun of whomever I please, whenever I please! As a good Huguenot, I don’t like people who profane graves. But as for fleeing, it would be pure folly. That’s my answer.”

  A long silence followed. Merdanson and Carajac looked abashed and crestfallen to be so rebuffed.

  “Siorac,” continued Cossolat, looking very pleased with himself, “what have you learnt from your friend?”

  “That Cabassus was hauled before the Présidial judges, but recused himself as a priest, so the judges have asked the bishop to judge the case.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “Yes.”

  “So my visit wasn’t in vain,” said Cossolat. “Listen to what happened next. The bishop ordered three canons to go to interrogate Cabassus in his hut. He was in bed with a bad cold, which was so severe it made him deaf. They couldn’t get anything out of him except a bunch of incoherent sounds, so they decided he was a crazy, senile old wreck. On their way out, however, one of them found his Nego. Zounds! According to what I’ve heard this treatise is incendiary—every one of its hundred pages is like another stick on his pyre and it doesn’t take a hundred sticks to burn an atheist.”

  “Oh,” I groaned, “Cabassus is a goner and it’s all my fault!”

  “All his fault” corrected Cossolat. “When you’ve got such ideas it’s pure folly to write them down! The canons have locked him in the ecclesiastical jail.”

  “Will they torture him?”

  “For the moment, they can’t because he’s a priest. But the canons want to defrock him, and once they do that, and he’s a mere layman, they’ll hand him back over to the Présidial judges, and they’ll torture him.” Cossolat looked me in the eye.

  “This is where your friend can be infinitely helpful if he can inform you in time.”

  “To flee?” said Merdanson in a voice stifled by fear.

  “Young man,” replied Cossolat, “you must realize that if you flee you lose everything: your family, your friends, your city, your studies, your future. Consider it only as a last resort: I hope I’ve convinced you of this.”

  “But, Monsieur,” said Carajac, “Siorac, here, has powerful friends to protect him. We don’t!”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. If Siorac’s protection holds, it holds for all three of you. You can’t incriminate some but not others, or exculpate one without exculpating all three. Think about this.”

  This said, he rose and left, in his abrupt and military way, scarcely bowing as he exited, back and neck as stiff as a board.

  I spent the rest of the day as best I could, which is to say atrociously, having but one thought, which I turned over and over in my poor head, which I risked losing on the scaffold. By the light of my candle I tried going over my lecture notes in my room after our meagre supper, but they danced before my eyes in total confusion. And what was the good of all this knowledge now, I wondered, that I was trying so hard to memorize? Alas, I couldn’t say, feeling as though I were trapped in the hand of Destiny like a fly in the hands of playful children. Convinced of the futility of it all, I threw myself on my bed and, empty of tears to shed, I lay there, prey to an indescribable extremity of despair.

  There was a knock at the door, and I raised my head: it was my beloved Samson, whom I’d completely forgotten in my misery, scarcely having more than three words to say to him a day, and hardly a glance for him, whose angelic beauty would have consoled a leper. But here he was, on my threshold, more timid and wild than a virgin, afraid to enter, his copper-coloured locks falling around his ears so gracefully, his azure eyes so pure, his face freckled, framing his perfect mouth.

  “Excuthe me, my brother,” he said in that delicious lisp he’d had since infancy. “May I come in?”

  “You may, Samson,’ I replied, raising myself on my elbow, but unable to stand to embrace him. He gave me a troubled glance, noticing my languor, so unlike my usual energetic self, closed the door and came to sit down next to me on the bed. “My brother, are you thuffering from fever? You look tho defeated, pale and thad and you’ve not thaid a word to me in three dayth. Ith there some hidden reathon that you’re thuffering tho?”

  “It’s nothing, Samson. It will pass.” But suddenly thinking that it might easily be on the scaffold that it would pass, I suddenly burst into tears. Samson threw himself down beside me and held me tenderly while I sobbed uncontrollably, and assured me he’d do anything in the world to help if I’d only tell him how, and then himself began crying, mixing his tears with mine.

  “Oh, my beloved brother,” I sobbed, when I could speak again, “I’m so grateful for the affection you feel for me, and it gives me courage to go on. I cannot tell you for the moment what’s so bitterly troubling me but I promise to do so when I figure out how to deal with my predicament. But whether the outcome is a happy or a fatal one, I beg you to go on loving me when you learn of the terrible thing I’ve done.”

  “Oh, my brother!” replied Samson, who in his dove-like innocence couldn’t imagine any sin greater that this: “You haven’t become a papitht have you?”

  “No, no!” I laughed through my tears, so touched was I by his simplicity. “I stand firm in my Huguenot beliefs and, God willing, always shall.”

  “Then you’ll be thaved!” said Samson, his face radiant with joy, as if my salvation in the life to come was more important than my fortunes in this one.

  May Christ forgive me, but I couldn’t take such an elevated view of things, and was less preoccupied by my salvation than my life here below; but I didn’t say a word, not wishing to hurt Samson’s feelings. I was thoroughly
resolved to tell him later about the profanation, but in no wise about the fornication, since for him sins of the flesh were more damnable than any others.

  After a thousand assurances that he would always love me and come to my aid, whoever my enemies might be, he left, and the result of his visit and display of his great angelic love for me was that I slept better that night than the dozen nights that had preceded it.

  I awoke feeling more lively and vigorous and, as I combed my hair in front of my little mirror, I said to my image, “Well, if my head must fall, let it fall, by the belly of St Anthony! At least I won’t die as a coward.” And suddenly seeing the whole thing as a comedy I was playing in, I imagined myself climbing the steps of the scaffold surrounded by crowds of onlookers, and stepped across my room with a confident and brash air, my hands behind my back as if tied, and, kneeling before my stool as if it were the executioner’s block, I placed my head on it with my neck exposed and told the executioner with great authority: “Strike, villain!”

  I was so pleased with this bravado that I replayed the entire scene again and suddenly felt so cured and recovered from the terror that had so eaten away at me that, from that moment on, it was as if I’d removed all its venom by imagining my death, and I altogether ceased trembling or lamenting my fate.

  That was on a Wednesday, the day when Madame de Joyeuse was going to “offer her fingertips to me” as she had so prettily expressed it in her letter.

  After an excellent repast at the Three Kings, which I washed down with a bottle of Corbières wine (since I’d decided, given how uncertain my future was, to be less careful about my money), I headed towards Madame de Joyeuse’s mansion with a lively step, having resolved that morning to consider my impending death as a certainty and therefore cleared my heart of all the rubbish of despair, which was only a sly version of hope.