by Robert Merle
“Monsieur,” said Little Sissy as soon as the door had closed behind us, “are you going to whip this poor wench who cannot keep from caressing you the minute you so much as brush her with your finger?” And immediately she pulled me to her and, cooing softly, pressed her body so tightly against mine that there’d have been no way to strike her except in a laughing, loving parody of cruelty.
“Ah, you daughter of a Gypsy!” I gasped. “There you go again with your impertinence! What honey bee stung you to make you dare confront that noblewoman?”
“My jealousy,” she answered straightaway, lowering her head like a little goat. “Oh, my Pierre! I hate these two great whores, who hide their old age and wrinkles beneath all that powder and grease and who look at men as if they were going to swallow them whole!”
“Old age!” I laughed.
“It’s true! Dame du Luc is old enough to be my mother!”
“Enough!” I said. “She’s going to marry Samson and not me. And they’ll be leaving soon enough.”
“And thank God for that!”
“Peace, my little warbler!” I soothed, softened by the firm flesh that she was pressing into me, and the sweet nothings she was whispering in my ear. “Be off with you, little viper, and ask Miroul to bring some firewood.”
“Madame my sister,” I announced as I re-entered her room, “I beg your pardon for this nasty business. I would have punished the miscreant if you hadn’t pardoned her.”
“Nay, Monsieur,” she said, her eyes shining. “I believe I heard that the wench is pregnant? Is this your fruit?”
“’Tis grafted from my stalk, yes.”
“Well, then!” smirked Gertrude. “Surely you’re not going to spoil a crupper that’s so serviceable…”
“’Tis true, Madame.”
“And since the wench knows it all too well, am I to suffer further insolence from her?”
“No, Gertrude,” I promised. “Miroul will serve you in her place.”
“What? A manservant!” exclaimed Zara, who pretended not to like men. “A man in here! By my conscience!”
“You’ll not die of it, Zara,” said Dame du Luc. “Miroul is very respectful of you.”
“Well, it’s to his credit!” answered Zara, who, having placed the candles on the table without having set them in the candelabra, was rubbing her hands with ointment.
There was a knock on the door, and since Zara was so engrossed in her ointments I went to open it, and Miroul came in with
“each eye a different hue,
the right one brown,
the left one blue!”
as my poor little Hélix used to love to chant. He went to pile some firewood in the corner of the chimney to warm it, since the recent rains had dampened it. Then, with a deep bow to Dame Gertrude and a slightly less profound gesture of reverence to Zara—so subtly derisive that I was the only one to notice it—he was heading towards the door when Zara cooed:
“Sweet Miroul, might I ask you a favour?”
“Madame, I’d be delighted to oblige,” replied Miroul, bowing, his chestnut eye twinkling brightly.
“I need you,” replied Zara, very happy to see herself called “Madame”, “to place the candles on the candelabra.”
“Madame,” smiled Miroul, “with pleasure! Better these large hands than your delicate fingers!”
I burst out laughing, and Gertrude smiled wryly, while Zara couldn’t help looking wounded, since she immediately understood the extent to which this malicious compliment was meant to put her in her place. For our household domestics have their points of honour, just as their masters do: valets bring firewood; chambermaids set candles. And no doubt Miroul understood that Zara believed she could get away with such behaviour simply because her mistress clothed her in such finery.
Miroul took his leave as soon as he had set and lit the candles, which were not only the subject of Sauveterre’s bitter remonstrations but the object of the scorn of the entire household (excepting my father)—from the chambermaids to the scullery maids, who were free to express their disapproval of this wasteful practice openly, since Dame Gertrude didn’t understand a word of the local dialect.
As soon as Miroul had left the room, Dame du Luc said, “Zara, close the door, if you please.” And this done, still sitting, Gertrude held out her hand and bade me sit on a little stool at her feet, so that my back was to the fire and my face close up to her dress, which was beautifully brocaded and awash with perfume.
“My brother,” she asked, “where are we in our great affair?”
“Uncle de Sauveterre is very recalcitrant and my father has but half consented.” Which was only half true, since my father had given his full consent to their marriage.
“What?” she gasped, her green eyes full of alarm. “Not given his full consent?”
“Neither my father nor I,” I replied.
“What? You! Ah, what treason! You, my brother, whom I so dearly love!” And saying this, she leant forward and placed her hands on my shoulders, in such a way as to expose to their greatest advantage her bodily charms for my enjoyment—and subjugation. “Aha!” I thought. “Now I see the why and the wherefore of this stool that’s so artfully placed as to prevent my retreating without backing into the fire if the enemy presses my front line.” However, knowing that my greatest weakness presently was my eyes, and that the attack was aimed directly at them, I closed them halfway, and, behind this defence, fortified my resolution, saying in a firm voice:
“Madame my sister, I cherish you as well, and hold you in great friendship. But, as you yourself have confessed, there is a certain licence given to widows such as you, one that the world may close its eyes to but a husband could not forgive.”
“But did I not,” she answered, lowering her eyes, “already give you my oath about any further goings-on with Quéribus?”
“It’s not about Quéribus,” I countered, “but about certain immoral adventures to which, as a widow, you became all too accustomed.”
“What, you heretic Huguenot! You dare call my pious pilgrimages ‘immoral’?”
“The goal may have been pious,” I replied stiffly, “but not the paths that led to it. And those paths, as everyone knows, abound in dangers for a woman’s virtue.”
“Oh, my brother!” she countered, and brought her face up close to mine so that the firelight illuminating her blonde hair appeared to create a halo—an adornment I doubted she could lay claim to. “Oh, my brother!” she cooed, feigning a charming confusion. “What unjust suspicions! I who thought only of my indulgences on my travels!”
“I think you’ve put the remedy too close to temptation—or the other way around,” I said with a smile. “And these indulgences will be unnecessary once you’ve committed to a life without sin in your marriage to Samson.”
“True enough,” she sighed, withdrawing her hands from my shoulders and leaning back against the chair’s cushions with a great sigh. She remained silent for a few minutes with Zara standing by her side—but certainly not in the role of her guardian angel, her beautiful compassionate eyes moving back and forth between her mistress and me, and, no doubt, at this point hardly loving me more than my valet.
“So I must promise to give up my pilgrimages!” said Gertrude with yet another sigh.
“You must.”
“Ah, cruel man!” she sniffed. “How you harry me!”
“For the love of you know very well whom!”
“But,” she said, temporizing, “would I marry him if I didn’t love him?”
“Well, Gertrude,” I said, rising to my feet with sudden impatience, “I see you all too clearly there! You want to have it all: Samson and your pretty little adventures! But it cannot be!”
“Ah, Monsieur!” Zara burst out angrily. “Don’t you see how you’re mortifying my mistress terribly with all your high and mighty airs! What brutes men are, putting knives to our throats like that! Fie! What wickedness! And what’s it to you how things go in your brother’s m
arriage? Is it really any of your business?”
To which I answered not a word, pretending not to have heard, and no more looking at Zara than if she’d been a log beside the road. My attitude clearly saddened her, since ordinarily she could count on looks that showered her as if with flowers, not to mention words that I lavished on her unsparingly and that she drank up like grass the morning dew.
“Easy there, Zara!” scolded Gertrude. “Calm down, my little sparrow! Monsieur de Siorac is very concerned about the innocence of my pretty Samson and would never want him to suffer from my feminine weakness, which he’s trying, as a good brother, to help me to overcome. And that’s all there is to it. And he’s doing the right thing, even if it goes against some of my natural proclivities. Oh, Pierre!” she continued with a sigh. “Widowhood wasn’t such a bad condition, you know. I was free to spend my money as I wished, free to open my wings and travel year in, year out to Chartres, to Toulouse, to Rome, to Compostela—anywhere I wanted! But I understand that if I want my Samson, I’m going to have to put an end to my wandering ways.”
“So you’re truly resolved in this?” I said more gently.
“Completely.”
“Ah, Madame!” said Zara, the tears in her eyes telling me just how much she felt she had to lose as Gertrude’s partner in the comforts and delights of these travels.
“My sister,” I said to Dame du Luc, putting knee to floor and taking her hand to kiss it, “I beg you not to resent me too much for my zeal. But you know how innocent and naive Samson is, yet how implacable. At your first lapse, he would cut you off from him like a rotten limb, even if it meant mutilating his heart forever.”
Hearing this, Gertrude, whose own heart was as tender as her morals were weak, began to weep uncontrollably, a sight that overwhelmed me with pity—and Zara as well—who knelt beside me at her knees as together we comforted her with kisses, caresses and soothing, sweet words until she finally calmed down.
“Oh, my Pierre,” she confessed when she’d regained her composure enough to speak, “if you didn’t already love Angelina and I didn’t love Samson, it’s you I should have married, for you’re so direct and honest with me that I can’t help feeling some solace in obeying you even in the teeth of my resistance.”
“Oh, Madame!” warned Zara, who saw this confession as a betrayal of her sex.
“Zara! Zara!” scolded Dame Gertrude. “For heaven’s sake! Don’t be so querulous! And make your peace with Monsieur de Siorac! I don’t want to hear you calling him ‘mean’ or ‘stupid brute’ any more as you’ve been so bold as to do.”
“Madame,” said Zara with one of those little pouts that, once they’d left her pretty lips, began to agitate her whole person and move in a kind of undulation throughout her body, right down to her toes, “if Monsieur de Siorac requires me to ask his forgiveness—”
“Stop right there, my pretty!” I exclaimed. “Your beauty is ample warrant that all your impertinence shall be forgiven—plus a few kisses on your pretty cheek and your alluring neck” (which I applied as I named each spot, before finishing off with a languorous kiss on her mouth).
“Good my brother,” interrupted Gertrude, suddenly rising, whether because she didn’t fancy having her chambermaid thus praised and petted, or because she judged any compliments that were not addressed to her to be a waste of chivalry, “I believe I heard you say that Samson and you converted to the reformed religion at the age of ten.”
“And I have very good reasons for remembering it, for my father got quite angry at me on that occasion for not wholeheartedly embracing the new faith.”
“Ah!” crowed Gertrude, raising an eyebrow. “And why was that?”
“I loved Mary. And at that age I thought that any religion that didn’t have a woman to adore would never wholly win my heart.”
“Listen to that, Madame,” laughed Zara. “When he was in his swaddling clothes, Monsieur de Siorac was already entranced by the fairer sex.”
“Well, he can be pretty intransigent about morality when it comes to anyone but himself!” added Gertrude. “But never mind,” she continued, as soon as her arrow was aloft, “so you were baptized in the true religion then, my brother.”
“If you insist on calling it that,” I conceded, with a very cold nod of the head.
“And Samson as well, then, who’s born of a different mother but is the same age as you.”
“Samson as well.”
“Pierre,” she coaxed, stepping up very close to me, her green eyes sparkling, “may I ask you to request of the priest of Marcuays that he provide a written attestation that Samson was baptized as a Catholic and that he hears Mass?”
“That he hears Mass?” I said, flabbergasted.
“He’ll hear Mass next Sunday with me in the chapel at Mespech, since your father has asked your priest to come here to say Mass for Zara, maestro Giacomi and me.”
“Well, Gertrude, it’s quite amazing what you’ve managed to obtain from my father!”
“Well, to tell the truth,” confessed Gertrude, lowering her eyes, “Zara had a hand in it.”
“Oh, Madame!” protested Zara.
I couldn’t help laughing.
“In any case,” I continued, “Pincers, our priest, won’t celebrate your marriage if Samson hasn’t renounced loudly and clearly the new religion. He’s too much under the thumb of the bishop of Sarlat.”
“Don’t worry, my good priest from Normandy won’t be so difficult. He’ll be satisfied by the written attestation I mentioned, if you’ll be so good as to get it in Marcuays.”
I’d already resolved to do that very thing, and had decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea to ask Pincers for a similar attestation for myself, which would be very useful should the very Catholic Monsieur de Montcalm ever agree to let me marry my Angelina.
But presently I found this room to possess great charm, since I’d never seen it illuminated in this way, both by the crackling fire and by the profusion of candles; nor had the dark walls of Mespech ever been so brightened as they were by the golden locks of Gertrude, and the beauty and the accoutrements of such fine ladies—who, no doubt, recalled to my father, as they did to me, my late mother. I found I wasn’t in such a rush to accomplish the task Dame Gertrude had set before me, and began presenting some objections to the lady’s plan in order to prolong as much as possible this sweet scene, and they obligingly began begging and caressing me to help me put off my resolve to visit Pincers.
Carrying their message as well as one from my father, I went to see Pincers, the local priest, the next day at nightfall, accompanied by some protection whom I hoped not to employ unless absolutely necessary: my good Miroul, my master-at-arms Giacomi and Fröhlich, my faithful Swiss Guard from Berne, who’d never left me since the St Bartholomew’s day massacre, feeling no dishonour at quitting the service of Henri de Navarre, who was to all intents and purposes a prisoner in the Louvre, to offer his services as bodyguard to a young Périgordian whose resources lay more in his wisdom than in his wallet.
Having attached our horses to the hitching posts in the place de Marcuays, I banged loudly on the priest’s door, and his serving girl, after requesting me to identify myself through a small peephole, finally unlocked and opened up.
“How are you, Jacotte?” I asked with a tap on her derrière.
“Well enough, my noble Monsieur,” laughed the fluttering, sprightly wench, so much more amply endowed in bosom than any other woman in Marcuays, her face so smooth and her body so firm that you had to doubt that she was even close to the canonical age required of women who are in the service of priests—and seemed even less appropriate for the job given her complexion. In the village, ever since the silly business in which our priest had earned the nickname “Pincers” (which I recounted earlier), people quite simply referred to her as the “priestette”, though never to her face. Although ordinarily quite a fearless wench, she blanched a bit when she saw my escort.
“But who’s this?!” she stammered,
pointing at Giacomi, standing as tall and thin as a sword.
“This is maestro Giacomi,” I replied, “assistant to the Great Silvie, the fencing master of the Duc d’Anjou.”
“And this mountain of a man?” she queried, pointing to Fröhlich, who, at that very instant, was having to bend over to cross her threshold and to squeeze his shoulders together to avoid damage to the door frame.
“He’s one of the king’s archers, who’s now working for me,” I replied, careful not to refer to his Huguenot leanings.
At this she fell silent and just stood there staring at us (including Miroul, whom she knew already), taking in the fact that all four of us were armed to the teeth.
“Monsieur,” she stammered, now clearly terrified, “what business have you with my master?”
“My good woman,” I replied as casually yet as coldly as I could, “that’s between him and me.”
“Well, Monsieur!” cried Jacotte. “Are you going to take your revenge on him for bearing witness against you in your duel with Fontenac? Don’t you realize he only did so with a knife at this throat?”
“Or maybe it was his knife that was all polished up for evil business,” I mused, not wanting to relieve her fears. “But enough, Jacotte. I’m not here to argue with you. Go straightaway and fetch your master and bring him here. Miroul, follow her wherever she goes. I don’t want the wench running off before we’ve finished our business here.”
At this Jacotte shook more violently than a poplar leaf in a high wind and was too nervous to object to Miroul’s advances as she led him to the oratory of the priest.
“Ah, good master,” Miroul laughed later, “I could have turned her into a Huguenot right then and there, she was so afraid I’d dispatch her once the priest was dead.”
Her double-dealing master didn’t look so confident when he arrived in the room—or rather was hauled before us—where the three of us awaited him in front of his fireplace, each with his right hand on his sword hilt. To tell the truth, Fröhlich’s attention was distracted by a terrine of pâté de foie gras and a flagon of wine that awaited our host, his table already set for his evening meal—our priest being as much of a glutton as our giant Swiss Guard, and, according to la Maligou, who’d been groped by him, an insatiable lecher and drinker. You could have easily guessed these habits from his crimson complexion, his huge nose, which practically obscured his fleshy lips, the glint in his tiny eyes and his low forehead. As I looked at him, I mused that Pincers had just enough brain to serve his appetites, but not an atom of room for any knowledge or manners, for he was not a godly man, however much he pretended to be one.
