“Where’s Papa?” Jean-Pierre asked drowsily. Astride the donkey, he wobbled. I steadied him with my hand firmly on his shoulder.
I could not answer. I studied the leather travel pouches our donkey carried. Hunger gnawed at my stomach, but I ignored it.
“Where will we go?” I asked Brother Gabriel, who rode the other donkey, leading us away from the grove.
“To the northeast,” he said over his shoulder, “to Huguenot lands, then, if necessary, on to Geneva. To Switzerland where there is more freedom … until the persecution passes. You must live where you can learn to read without being punished.”
We had only walked a few paces when I glanced back and stopped. Smoke curled darkly in the sky above the village. It rose and billowed, blacker and blacker, like a beckoning hand hovering in the windless morning. I would not be able to so much as bury my father’s ashes, to let him rest beside my mother.
“Marius,” Brother Gabriel said, riding back to my side. “We must go quickly, before anyone stops us.”
Smoke continued to build and billow. Even now, the abbot was there, presiding over my father’s burning. I churned in anger. He had forced me into a bargain over my brother’s fate and my own. I spat out my words. “I owe the abbot nothing.”
“The best you can do,” my uncle said, “is to leave—to move on and become a light in this cursed darkness.”
I clenched my teeth, lost in shock as thick as fog.
“And what about Madame Troubène?” I asked. “She’s very ill. Who will care for her?”
“I stopped at your home first, looking for you. Marguerite was there. She promised to look after her.”
For now, I would lean on my uncle’s words. Lean on his strength and move on, though to what, I had no idea.
I tried to absorb a last glimpse of Venyre, its walls built high, meant to keep the enemy out, to provide safety for those within. Today the decree had been carried out to burn the heretics. And tomorrow they would herald the Savior’s birth; joyous and festive, villagers would follow the crated lamb through the streets to church.
I would not be there. My family would not be there. Life would never again be the same. I could not take my eyes off the smoke. My father. His image pierced my heart. Tears brimmed. If only I could have saved him. If only I had been a knight with a thousand men, an angel with a legion of angels. But I was only human, only a boy.
No, I was more than that. I was my father’s son, on my way to becoming a man.
I filled my chest sharply with air, made the sign of the cross, and adjusted the lute on my back. Flanked by my little brother and a stray dog, I walked away, leaving my life in Venyre behind without another glance back.
A WINTER MOON
We left Venyre farther and farther behind, its windows shuttered tight against December. The Mistral wind howled from the north, quieted for a time, then blew again.
We followed my uncle. The heavy cloak that Brother Gabriel had supplied hung below my breeches and trapped my body’s warmth as I walked. Jean-Pierre wore a thick wool blanket around his small frame and hummed as he combed the donkey’s wiry mane with his fingers.
I walked silently alongside Jean-Pierre, my hand on his knee. “Where’s Papa?” he asked again. “Will he meet with us somewhere, Marius?”
I walked on, unable to answer. The foul smoke of my father’s senseless death clung to my clothing, and with each step that took me away, my heart weighted me down. My mind raced back to the past, forward to the unknown, and all the time my feet carried me, almost against my will. I followed the thin, winding road between a patchwork of fields, vineyards, olive groves, and deep forest toward the next village.
Hours later, as we veered onto a sandy path between scraggly cedars, he asked again, perhaps for the twelfth time, “Marius, tell me. Where’s Papa?”
I remembered how helpless I had felt the night my brother was born. How certain I was that life could not go on without my mother. And yet it had. Like me, Jean-Pierre would have to pick his way through life as best he could. At least neither of us would be completely alone.
This time, I answered. “He died,” I whispered, and my heart tore with the words.
Jean-Pierre looked at me and began to speak, but his small round mouth held no sound.
I squeezed his knee, then placed my hand over my heart. “Papa,” I managed, “will be here always. Here with Mama … and right beside God.”
I still couldn’t grasp that my father was gone. He should be in his smithy at the break of dawn, pumping the billows at his forge until the embers glowed a deep red. I would carry his memory forever. At least Jean-Pierre had been spared from witnessing the burning.
I drew the donkey to a stop, reached up, and embraced my brother.
As we traveled, the dog clung to my heels. At a wooden bridge, I reached into my pocket and found the bread I’d intended for my father. I broke off pieces and shared a chunk with Jean-Pierre, then held another piece out in my palm. Gently, the dog lifted the bread from my hand with his soft mouth.
“Good boy,” I told him. He jumped clear off the ground and licked my chin.
In the waning light of late afternoon, we paused at a stream and let the donkeys drink. My uncle, Jean-Pierre, and I found a wide, sloping rock, cupped our hands in the icy water, and drank.
Brother Gabriel lifted his face from the stream, water dripping off his chin.
“I have made provisions,” he said, walking to the smaller donkey and rummaging through a leather satchel, “for your journey ahead.”
“‘Our journey?’” I asked. I stood up, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “Aren’t you coming with us?”
He shook his head. “Will we never see you again?” I asked, my voice rising. I couldn’t face leaving my only other known relative.
“When you reach the monastery past the next village,” he said, reaching into his cloak and withdrawing an embroidered blue scarf and a simple scroll, “you will give this scroll to Brother Etienne, who will send you forward from there. He will send the scarf to me as a sign that you’ve reached your first resting point.”
He turned the scroll to reveal a red wax seal stamped with a cross over a rose, the same rose design on my lute. “You’ll travel under the safety of my seal. And we will, I promise, meet soon.”
He paused. Jean-Pierre leaned into my side.
“When we near the next village, you’ll continue on. I’ll return to the monastery and tell the abbot you fled in the opposite direction.”
“But what of you?” I asked. “If the abbot knows that you helped us, won’t you be in trouble?”
“The abbot has no power over me,” he said, and smiled just enough to deepen his dimples. “I am an equal to him in rank. If changes do not come from good men, the whole Church will indeed rot away. I must stay a while longer. But don’t worry. I am not abandoning you.”
That night, as stars emerged—faint glimmers of light in the deepening sky—I said good-bye to Brother Gabriel, kissed him on each side of his face, then watched him slip away into the darkness, like an angel leaving for another world.
We continued northeast, Brother Gabriel’s scarf and sealed scroll tucked in a leather pouch, and journeyed wide around the walls of the next village. The rising moon illuminated our path.
In a cedar grove, we tied up the donkey and rested close together on soft boughs that we cut and layered on the ground. Wrapped in my cloak, numb with exhaustion, I slept, back to back with my brother.
Hours later, with a start, I woke to the cry of a distant wolf.
Eyes suddenly wide, I lifted my head. The wolf’s song drifted eerily on the wind through the woods. Christmas Eve. Who knew what might become of us? Our dog lifted his head, too, eyes glinting in the full moon’s white beam, and his ears perked up. I sank my fingers into his fur and waited. Somewhere far off, another wolf sang, and two cries melted into one voice, melancholy and piercing. Then the night again fell silent. Before long, our dog snuggled back
into the crook of my arm. I laid down, closed my eyes, and drifted into an uneasy sleep.
In the murky light between night and morning, I awoke. A mist enveloped us. Sweet cedar scented the air. Our dog was curled in a ball, and Jean-Pierre slept soundly with his mouth wide open. I was relieved that the night had passed.
I reached inside my shirt, pulled out the wolf-tooth necklace, and held it in my hand. For a long time, I studied it, felt its sharp point, and turned the last few days over in my mind. My chest was heavy with loss. My whole being ached as I thought of my father. I would honor his life and continue in his brave footsteps, continue toward the dream of reading and learning that he and my mother had shared for me. I would use my mind and trust my heart.
From around my neck, I lifted the leather necklace, then buried it deep beneath our bed of cedar. My courage, from that time on, would come from another place.
I tapped Jean-Pierre’s shoulder until he stirred. “We must move on,” I said.
With my lute strapped on my back, once again we set off. The sun climbed slowly, steadily upward, burning off the mist, and in the early light a snow-tipped mountain shone ahead, brighter than any spire I had ever seen.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Though this is a work of fiction, the story of Marius Poyet and his family in mid-sixteenth-century France is historically possible. In France alone in the sixteenth century, thousands and thousands of people—women and children included—were accused of being werewolves; countless numbers of those suspected were put to death at the stake, along with others charged with witchcraft, sorcery, and heresy.
As superstition would have it, a variety of symptoms might indicate that a person was a werewolf. Epilepsy was one sign. A Christmas Eve birth, eyebrows joined above the bridge of one’s nose, rough palms (from shaving werewolf fur)—these, too, were indications that one could be a loup garou.
The times were brutally difficult. Though the most well-known plague, the Black Death, hit Europe in the late fourteenth century, plagues and illnesses (sleeping sickness, or perhaps influenza, hit France hard in the 1550s) continued to scour the land. Poverty, in part due to overtaxation and financial obligations to the Church, was on the increase, and the level of corruption within the Church leadership had never been higher.
In reaction, Protestantism—a “protest” against the Catholic church—continued to spread. A number of strong religious leaders aided in its growth. Martin Luther’s use of the printing press in Germany early in the sixteenth century had much to do with the rapid growth of the Reformation. Lefévre d’Étaples translated the Bible into French and was active in Protestant circles until 1525. In the 1530s John Calvin, a Frenchman, introduced a new form of Protestantism (later to be called Calvinism) that gained increasing popularity with nobles as well as with the laboring class.
Books were expensive and available only to those who could afford them. The most widely translated book was the Bible, which the Church forbade reading on one’s own, especially in a language other than Latin. The layperson, or common person, was not trusted to read the Bible on his or her own. Those who could read were suspected of reading materials that ran counter to Church doctrine.
When it came to dissenters of the Catholic faith, the Church and the Crown acted in unison. Indeed, the Catholic church in France, called the Gallican church, followed the king in matters of faith. Because King Henry II knew that books were powerful agents of change, he condemned the printing and distribution of Protestant literature. According to historian Will Durant, “in 1549, France’s own King Henry II set himself to crush heresy. By the Edict of Chateaubriand (1551) the printing, sale, or possession of heretical literature was made a major crime, and persistence in Protestant ideas was to be punished with death.” Informers were to receive a third of the goods of the condemned.
In response to this censorship, the secret printing of Protestant books and placards (flyers or pamphlets) mushroomed. In France, Protestant believers were called Huguenots, a term derived from the phrase, le roi Huguet, the name inhabitants of the city of Tours gave to any ghost seen haunting their city at night. Perhaps the secretive nature of Protestant gatherings led to the sinister name Huguenot.
As the Huguenot movement gained a following, pronouncements of heresy increased. For instance, on June 10, 1559, Anne du Bourg, son of a former chancellor, spoke out in the French parliament against the persecutions and said it was “no small thing to condemn those who, amidst the flames, invoke the name of Jesus Christ.” In response to his bold words, that following December, he, too, was burned at the stake.
The Catholic Church for centuries had enjoyed absolute political and religous power as the “one Christian church” of Europe. But absolute power can lead to corruption, and the sixteenth century was a time when the Church appeared to be rotting from within. Though there were monasteries, for instance, who did minister to the needy, many other monasteries were run as ruthless baronies, putting an increasing burden upon the population they were meant to serve.
As the Church’s influence became weaker, eventually it was forced to address its problems at the Council of Trent, after which many reforms were made to begin to draw the Church back to its basic teachings, especially to the call of service. The Council of Trent, however, also drew up an extensive list of banned books.
Geneva, Switzerland, became a place of refuge for many Huguenots fleeing the persecution of the Catholic Church. In time, however, the strict form of Protestantism encouraged by John Calvin in Geneva led to its own persecutions for those who didn’t bend to the ways of the Protestant faith.
Given the challenges of living in the sixteenth century, it is little wonder that music continued to be a great source of comfort, entertainment, and inspiration for peoples of all classes. It is said that fields were filled with the singing of peasants; minstrels traveled from village to village; lords and ladies, even kings and queens, often composed music and played instruments.
The lute was one of the most favored instruments of the day and one of the first to be appreciated as a solo instrument, not just as an accompaniment for vocalists. During the sixteenth century in France, a good musician—such as Marius Poyet—would have readily found an appreciative and grateful audience.
FOR FURTHER READING:
Cohen, Daniel. Werewolves (New York, 1996).
Davis, Natalie Zemon. The Return of Martin Guerre (Cambridge, Mass., 1983).
Davis, Natalie Zemon. Society and Culture in Early Modern France: Eight Essays (Stanford, 1975).
Neuschel, Kristen. Word of Honor: Interpreting Noble Culture in Sixteenth-Century France (Ithaca, 1989).
Salmon, J. H. M. Society in Crisis: France in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1975).
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Visit Le Poulet Gauche, a Web site devoted to the history, culture, and daily life of sixteenth-century France at:
www.lepg.org
“Legends of the Werewolves” (video documentary). The History Channel, 1998 A&E Television Networks, 126 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011
Mary Casanova is the author of more than thirty books for young readers, ranging from picture books such as The Day Dirk Yeller Came to Town, Utterly Otterly Night, and One-Dog Canoe to novels, including Frozen (Minnesota, 2012). Her books have received two Minnesota Book Awards, as well as many other honors, and she speaks frequently around the country at readings, schools, and libraries. She lives with her husband and three dogs in a turn-of-the-century house in Ranier, Minnesota, near the Canadian border.
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