Fortunes of France 4: League of Spies

by Robert Merle

  “Go on, my Miroul,” I agreed reluctantly, feeling sorry for him for now having such a dry mouth after previously drooling so much. “You’re right, we can never take too many precautions when the roads are so full of danger and the inn is invaded by these swine we saw wallowing in their slop, and whose necks have grown fat for the rope!”

  This said, and having softened his pain as much as I could through my praise of his work and worth, I embraced him and sent him away happy in his virtue and in himself—small consolations, perhaps, when he’d expected to bite into such sweet, forbidden fruit.

  I didn’t fall asleep as quickly as I’d hoped, having such a sore backside from all our riding, as well as suffering pangs of regret for the decision I’d made to take the main road, given the presence of these scoundrels who’d followed us. I believe there’s no greater vice than impatience—which, in this case, had caused us to leave the king’s procession, thereby exposing us to the dangers of travelling without their protection, and, subsequently, to choose not to take the longer route. All of these thoughts so disturbed me that my heart was beating like a drum, so I got up and went to verify that our windows were securely fastened, and then went to knock on Mundane’s door. He had not yet gone to sleep, as you can easily imagine, and opened the door so I could take a look at his windows, which were sealed as tight as a tomb. I wished him goodnight, and urged him to bolt his door and to sleep with his sword unsheathed at his side.

  “Well, good chevalier!” he laughed, his eyes shining, his red hair and beard aglow in the lamplight. “If you’d had a wife as cold and thin as your good blade, would you have had so many beautiful children?”

  And, though my heart wasn’t into it, I laughed at his little joke and then repeated my warning that, if he were to receive a nocturnal visitor, he should be very careful to lock the door behind her when she left. He heartily assured me that, like Ulysses, he’d know how to ward off all Circes, Calypsos and sirens, and that, in any case, he had no use for the gentler sex and preferred the company of dogs and horses. That was Mundane in a nutshell: enjoying his disguise and laughing at me from behind his mask.

  I left his room and went to knock on the door of Sergeant Delpech, whom I saw already snoring on his bed (since he’d drunk copiously beforehand), with his three guards spread out on the floor beside him. Seeing their leader disabled so quickly, I checked on the window bolts and then sent two of his guards down to the stables to help Miroul keep watch there. As for the remaining soldier, I advised him to bolt the door behind me.

  Having taken these precautions, I felt a bit more light-hearted, though I took great care to make sure my pistol was loaded, its wick at the ready beside the candle, and my sword unsheathed. As soon as I blew out the flame, I fell into a deep sleep, though in my dreams I kept realizing that I’d lost something—I didn’t know what it was, but was sure it was a thing of great consequence. Moreover, I had the impression that I hadn’t slept at all when, suddenly, a loud noise and uproar, followed by a piercing cry, awakened me. I leapt to my feet, grabbed my sword and pistol and ran to bang on Mundane’s door, but there was no answer and it was locked from the inside. Giacomi joined me, candle in hand, and behind him Delpech’s guard, both of them, like me, naked as the day they were born. Following them, the innkeeper ran up, armed with an axe, but begged us not to break down his door—which of course we did, after promising him two écus for the damage, whereupon we quickly split the oak.

  We didn’t need Giacomi’s candle to determine that poor Mundane was dead, as the moon was shining brightly through the open window and bathed his bloody body in her light. He’d been stabbed who knows how many times before he’d been able to defend himself, his sword still sheathed by his side. As for his rings, there was not a trace, though I didn’t believe for a second that robbery was the motive for this murder, or that Mundane had opened his windows to his killers. And, observing on the bed a woman’s bodice and skirt, I sent the innkeeper and the guard away, the latter observing that this couldn’t have been the work of soldiers, who would have slit the man’s throat to keep him from crying out and sounding the alarm.

  This alarm having now been sounded, the entire inn was quickly roused and very shaken by the cries and the axe blows, and all the guests, wrested from their sleep, came running up in their nightgowns, candles in hand, to see what had happened. I decided to play the part of a bravo, and emerged from the room entirely naked but with pistol and sword in hand, scowling like the Devil, and shouted:

  “Good people, I’m an officer of the king, as you saw this afternoon from the livery of my guards. So in the name of the king I order you to return to your rooms and to go back to bed without further ado!”

  And since there were still some among them bold enough to attempt to push into the room to see what had happened, I pointed my sword at them and thundered:

  “By God, I’ll make a ghost of the next man who dares to take a step forward!”

  That was enough to disperse these rabbits, who scurried back to their rooms, allowing Miroul, who was at the back of the crowd, to come to my aid, sword in hand and so relieved to see me alive and unscathed that he scarcely batted an eye when he spied Mundane lying dead in his bloody bed.

  “Ah, Monsieur!” he cried, unable to say anything but this—“Ah, Monsieur!”—three or four times in a row.

  “Miroul,” I said, cutting him off, “hurry back to the stable and wake up those louts, if they’re still sleeping, and keep a sharp watch! And tell me,” I added, having no doubt as to who were the authors of this murder, “did those pigs we saw last night already ride away?”

  “Yes, an hour ago!”

  “Shouldn’t you have told me?”

  “But, Monsieur, they departed less than two hours after we’d finished our meal, and did so quietly and peaceably, like good subjects of the king, with neither swagger nor threats, but were quite civil with us.”

  “Ah, Miroul,” I sighed, “why didn’t you come to warn me? From now on, if any of the hotel’s guests attempts to saddle up before dawn, come and tell me!”

  At this reproach, Miroul left, very crestfallen, bitterly unhappy to have failed me and feeling badly stung for being blamed, sensitive as he was about his honour, despite being a valet.

  His departure left me alone with Giacomi, so I took the candle from his hands and, kneeling down beside the bed, looked underneath it.

  There, in one corner, cowered Marianne, naked, mute and apparently half-dead with terror. I ordered her to come out of hiding; once she’d emerged, she looked as though she would faint when she saw Mundane lying there—a weakness that struck me as oddly discordant with the resolution in her face. Seeing this, I told her in the coldest possible tone to get dressed. Which she did, much more calmly than I would have expected from a wench who’d just witnessed such violence, but, observing this, I forced myself to put aside the feelings that such women normally inspire, and to see her as someone with whom I must cross swords, rather than as the frisky brunette she was, thin and supple and yet sweetly rounded in the right places, with black eyes and a pretty face.

  “Marianne,” I warned with as much severity as I could muster, “if I handed you over to the provost of Mâcon, it is certain that he’d first put you on the rack and then hang you for having been an accomplice to this murder, since you were found under the bed of the assassinated man.”

  “Accomplice, Monsieur?” she protested, losing all the colour in her face but not a whit of her wits. “Assuredly, I am not! If I were, why would I have stayed here and not run off with those miscreants?”

  “Who found it remarkably expedient to abandon you once they’d done their business.”

  “No, no!” she cried. “I swear on my salvation! Oh, Blessed Virgin, hear my plea! And let the Devil devour me in one gulp if I’m lying! I never saw these rascals before last night’s meal, and I was an idiot to have taken that good-for-nothing’s five écus to lie with the Goddam”—by which she meant Englishman—“and open th
e window once he’d fallen asleep. That fox-faced villain told me he just wanted to play a joke on the fellow and make him believe he was my husband, which is why he pulled his hat down over his eyes at supper.”

  “And you believed him, you silly wench?”

  “Why should I question him when my hands were full of his money? Though I confess I was surprised that he told me to flee the room as soon as I’d opened the window—which I didn’t do but hid under the bed to enjoy the joke they were going to play on him! Oh heaven! I thought their swords were going to go straight through the bed and pierce me right through! And remember, Monsieur, that my bodice and skirt were still on the bed! I was mortally afraid they’d look under the bed and kill me too! But they never thought of it, thank God! They were too busy pulling his rings off.”

  “So they didn’t take them right away?”

  “No. They only removed them when they heard you banging on the door.”

  “Giacomi,” I said in Italian, “it’s clear that these spadaccini† were looking for the letter.”

  “Monsieur,” broke in Marianne, who seemed to be regaining her colour and self-assurance, “I speak Italian—my mother was from Florence. And I know what happened to the letter. While I was getting undressed, I watched the Goddam in the mirror as he was hiding it.”

  “And where is it?”

  “I’ll tell you,” she said, regaining her confidence, “if you’ll promise not to deliver me to the provost.”

  “’Sblood!” I cried in anger. “This is a cold wench! They kill a gentleman right under her nose and here she is bargaining like a Florentine.”

  “That’s because I am a Florentine,” said Marianne without batting an eye.

  “You minx!” I snapped. “If I hand you over to be tortured you’ll loosen your tongue.”

  “But you won’t be the only one to hear what I say,” said Marianne, who was clearly smarter than I’d imagined.

  “Giacomi,” I said in Latin, “what do you think of this wench? Don’t you think she’s too sly to be honest? Do you believe her story?”

  “If she were stupid I’d believe it,” replied Giacomi in the language of Cicero. “But, on the other hand, if the letter is a state secret, as you believe, should we allow the provost of Mâcon to get his hands on it? I think we have to make a deal with her.”

  “All right, but not before trying to frighten her!” And suddenly grabbing Marianne by her long hair, I pointed my sword at her breast. “That’s enough!” I cried at the top of my lungs. “No bargains. Talk if you want to live!”

  “Monsieur,” replied Marianne with a sudden smile, “you must be kidding! Would you really kill a woman, you who are so repulsed by the idea of letting her hang?”

  “Pierre,” interjected Giacomi in Latin, “the wench had you figured out in the blink of eye, and as for understanding her, she’s got more depth than either of us can gauge. I really don’t know what to think, except that, if she were conniving with these murderers, she would have told them where the letter was, since she saw Mundane hide it.”

  I was so struck by the justness of this observation, which seemed to clear the girl of any complicity with the assassins, that once again I was weak enough to ignore my own feelings, which inclined me in the opposite direction, and resolved to let her go if she provided us with the letter. In this I was miserably wrong, as events proved all too well.

  “Wench,” I said, “it’s a bargain: the letter for your freedom.”

  “Monsieur chevalier,” said Marianne, looking me in the eye, “do I have your word as a gentleman?”

  “You have. But how do you know I’m a knight?” I asked.

  “I heard the sergeant of the guards address you that way,” she answered.

  And though the thing was possible, I didn’t believe her, but decided to let it go, since I was so anxious to have the letter, which touched on the interests of three kingdoms, for although it was addressed by Navarre to Queen Elizabeth alone, I had no doubt that it also involved my master.

  “The Goddam put his letter under that chest over there,” said Marianne with a very reluctant air, as though she were as unhappy about giving me the letter as I was about setting her free.

  The chest was so large and heavy, being adorned with many iron clasps and bars, that I was unable to lift it by myself, and had to ask Giacomi to help, quite amazed that Mundane could have succeeded in this exploit all by himself.

  “I will keep my promise, Marianne,” I said once I had the letter. “You’re free to go.”

  “Thank God and thank you, Monsieur chevalier,” replied Marianne, making me a deep curtsey that seemed to contradict her expression, which seemed neither tender nor forgiving.

  “I believe it’s the Devil she should be thanking,” observed Giacomi, who, approaching Mundane’s body, added in a very melancholic voice, “Isn’t it a pity that the life of such a good man should be so little mourned, while this accursed letter has occupied all our attention?”

  “Sad but true, my brother,” I agreed. “I too feel the injustice of our neglect. And yet you can’t mourn a companion who’s fallen in combat as long as the combat continues, and it’s my belief that we’re still in great peril, as long as we have this in our hands.”

  Giacomi made no reply—I guessed that he was silently praying for the soul of the poor Englishman—so I took my leave to return to my room to get dressed and secure the letter in my doublet, since the missive felt like it was burning my very hands, so deadly was its effect. When I returned to Mundane’s room I found Sergeant Delpech, who’d been awakened by his men and appeared to have recovered from his drunkenness, but who was very distressed and ashamed to have slept like a dormouse through such an uproar. I sent him off to search for the innkeeper, and, Giacomi having gone off as well to get dressed, I was able to examine Mundane’s body at my leisure. I noticed that the entrances to the wounds were entirely in his chest, but that there was no evidence of their exit through his back. Thus I concluded that he had been stabbed with a dagger and not run through with swords, as Marianne had fallaciously recounted, claiming that they’d even pierced the bedding and threatened her own life.

  “Innkeeper,” I asked of this skinflint as he came in, “what do you know about this Marianne who’s in your employ, as regards her lodgings, her family or her village?”

  “Nothing at all, my noble Monsieur,” the fellow replied. “I hired her yesterday afternoon about an hour after my chambermaid unaccountably quit her post, and this strange wench arrived to offer to take her place without any discussion of wages, which is surprising, since I don’t pay well because of the very marginal profits of my inn. But, Monsieur,” he added, “I must, in all reverence, ask you as a matter of simple justice to pay for the bed, which is bloodstained beyond repair, as well as for the missing sheet.”

  “What?” I asked, amazed. “What’s this about a missing sheet? Do you think these miserable pigs ran off with your sheet? Of course, it would be a handsome heist for these scoundrels who’re now enjoying the spoils taken from this gentleman!”

  “But Monsieur,” countered our host, “you can see that there’s only one sheet here! Where’s the other one?”

  “How should I know? It must have slipped onto the floor!”

  At this, getting down on all fours and looking under the bed, the innkeeper cried out, and produced a sheet that had been rolled tightly into a ball, and which was quite bloodstained. When we unrolled it, out fell a dagger.

  “Oh my God!” I cried almost beside myself. “Where is this devil of a wench?! Innkeeper, show me her room immediately!”

  But, as we were hurrying towards her room, we bumped into Miroul, who was beside himself and breathless. “Monsieur,” he cried, “Marianne has just fled on your Andalusian mare!”

  “What? On my horse!”

  “Ah, Monsieur, she’s a devil! She came down to ask me to saddle your horse for you. This done, and as I had to let go of the bridle to open the stable door, she offered to ho
ld it. Then, while I was busy taking down the bars, she jumped on your horse as if she were a man, spurred it out onto the road and disappeared.”

  * “Like father, like son.”

  † “Swordsmen.”

  6

  THAT SHE HAD COMMITTED the murder, and that she alone had committed it, without help or complicity from any of the swinish fellows I’d suspected, now appeared incontrovertible and turned our search wholly in her direction. Marianne had taken advantage of the nocturnal departure of the good-for-nothings (who doubtless had other sins to confess) to shift all of the blame onto them by placing the ladder under Mundane’s window. Then, once the deed was done, she’d opened the window, thrown the Englishman’s rings outside to make us believe the swine had stolen them, wiped the bloodstains from her body on the sheet, wrapped the dagger in the same sheet and hidden it and herself under the bed, pretending to be in terrible shock at the murder she herself had perpetrated with such cold resolution, having stabbed poor Mundane at least a dozen times.

  We calculated that she’d arrived in Mâcon well before we had, and that she must have visited all of the inns, discovered they were full with the exception of the Black Horse, and deduced that that’s where we’d stay. She’d then bought off the chambermaid, convincing her to quit her job, and taken her place, guessing that Mundane, though likely to be suspicious of any traveller, would not suspect a serving girl, since throughout the kingdom these girls are chosen for their youth and beauty in order that they might charm the clientele into handing over a few coins in exchange for their company for the night. As for her behaviour during the previous night’s meal, her rejections of Giacomi, Miroul and me, and her whispered conversation with the fox-faced weasel were all coquetry designed to whet Mundane’s appetite, gain access to his room and, having exhausted him with her caresses, dispatch him while he was asleep.