Fortunes of France 4: League of Spies

by Robert Merle

  “But these fancy clothes, Alizon!”

  “I have just finished them for one of my clients who’s the same size as me, and I was cheeky enough to wear them so no one would recognize me, since I wanted to speak to you in person.”

  “But what if you’d met the lady on your way here?”

  “Monsieur, she’d not resent me, since I only put it on in order to save the life of her brother.”

  “What! Catherine! My sister Catherine! Good heavens! How I’d like to see her expression if she knew you were here! Ah, my little fly from hell!” I laughed, taking her in my arms and covering her face with kisses. “What a pretty trick this is!”

  “Monsieur!” hushed Miroul, raising the curtain enough to stick his head in. “May it please you to quiet down! You’re disturbing the Mass. And the verger is casting dirty looks in this direction!”

  “So go and grease his palm, Miroul! Alizon has just cured my melancholy!”

  “Ah, that makes me very happy, Monsieur! It grieved me to see you so patient with me!”

  “My Pierre,” whispered Alizon when the curtain was lowered again, “you’re a strange one! I run to denounce an ambush that’s been laid for you and you’re laughing!”

  “If you knew Catherine as I do, you’d be laughing too! The lady is so incredibly haughty that if she saw you in her clothes she’d throw herself in the mud in mortification! Alizon, if she refuses this dress, I’ll pay for it: it’s yours.”

  “Monsieur, I thank you! But we’re wasting time! They’re waiting to shoot you from the first floor of the needle shop opposite your lodgings.”

  “But the shop has been closed for a month.”

  “Which is why they could rent it.”

  “Little fly, this news is worth its weight in gold! How did you find out about it?”

  “From two women who were whispering this morning behind a curtain, and when I heard your name, I pricked up my ears.”

  “And what were you doing on the other side of this curtain?”

  “I was delivering some bonnets.”

  “And who are these ladies?”

  “Monsieur!” sniffed Alizon archly, pulling herself up. “I couldn’t tell you their names, since they’re my clients!”

  I would have laughed outright had she not covered my mouth with kisses.

  “I beg you, Monsieur, don’t laugh! You’re disturbing the Holy Mass!”

  Which would have made me laugh even harder, if I’d been able, but it also caused me a few bittersweet regrets, since I’d sworn to be faithful to my Angelina.

  “Alizon,” I began, pulling myself away, “I’m certain that I know those two ladies. One is quite tall, though small, and the other is smaller, though fairly tall. And the latter is, like you, a lively brunette, except her eyes aren’t as sweet as yours. And her name is—”

  “Mademoiselle de La Vasselière,” Alizon blurted out, almost in spite of herself.

  “Alizon,” I said, closing her mouth with my hand, “you must be careful not to bandy your clients’ names about so! You’ll lose business! I’m going to look into this matter, but know that I’m in your debt every bit as much as on that St Bartholomew’s dawn, when you sewed me a white armband to help me get away.”

  “Ah, Monsieur, it was nothing!” she said, blushing, not because of the memory of the danger but because of how close we were back then.

  “Nothing?” I replied. “Nothing less than my life. Alizon, I know how proud you are, but I beg you, take this ring.” And taking a topaz ring from my little finger I placed it on her ring finger, over her glove.

  “My dear Pierre,” she said, “I am of too low an estate to wear so precious a ring, but I will keep it among my treasures out of love for you.”

  As she was saying these words, the curtain was suddenly raised and she had just enough warning to whirl around and put on her mask, before the verger announced in his sonorous bass voice:

  “Good gentleman, the priest has pronounced the ite missa est.† Perhaps it would be best if the lady disappeared before the faithful begin to leave?”

  “Indeed! I appreciate the thought!”

  Alizon was outside in the blink of an eye, and, returning to my place behind the pillar, I found myself between Quéribus and Fogacer, our eyes respectfully lowered and our hands joined in prayer, for the entire time it took the few faithful that were there to exit the chapel and, as they did, to glance or to glare at me according to the great or little love that they bore me. As I peeked at them out of the corner of my eye, I could gauge just how much my disgrace had grown, spread and been discussed. What an edifying image we offered, Fogacer, Quéribus and I, to these gentlemen as we continued our devotions despite the fact that the first was an atheist, the second so lukewarm a Catholic that one got chills around him, and the third a Huguenot! But that’s how it is in this century, when zeal is measured in grimaces.

  “Mi fili,” counselled Fogacer sotto voce, “wipe your cheek! It’s smeared with rouge! Are you not ashamed to let yourself be kissed by a person of the opposite sex in Our Lord’s temple?”

  “This temple,” observed Quéribus, “has often been put to far worse use! Why, Princesse Margot once offered her body to the Baron de Vitteaux in here in order to persuade him to kill Du Guast.”

  “Excuse me, but you’re mistaken, Monsieur,” corrected Fogacer. “That fornication did not take place on these holy stones but on the floor of the Grands-Augustins chapel.”

  “’Tis true,” I agreed, “but it was here that Catherine de’ Medici piously took Communion the day she had Coligny assassinated.”

  I didn’t want to inform Quéribus or Fogacer of the ambush that had been planned, since I wasn’t sure whether the king wanted them to share the secret of this business, whereas Giacomi and Miroul had necessarily been involved ever since the business in Mâcon. And so I let the baron take his leave to prepare his coach and the escort that he’d promised to have ready by noon.

  Fogacer having assured me that he’d be ready and waiting with his Silvio, I remained alone with the maestro and Miroul, and, in a hushed voice, since the verger was hanging about with his ears pricked, I told them what was up.

  “Monsieur,” said Miroul, “you remember good Thomassine’s needle shop in Montpellier, which had two entries, as everyone knows these little houses often do, since they do other kinds of business than just selling needles? Wouldn’t it be the same for this one, since it’s unthinkable that the assassin, once he’d shot his arquebus, would walk quietly out into the street where you lay bleeding! No, no, it can’t be. I’ll wager that his horse is waiting for him in an alley behind the shop so that he can leap on it as soon as he’s shot you, the way Maurevert did after the murder of Coligny.”

  “You’re talking sense, young man,” said Giacomi. “Let’s go and find the horse in the alley that runs parallel to the rue du Champ-Fleuri and from there go up and get the man.”

  I fell silent, admiring the fact that Giacomi could easily have refused to be involved in such a perilous adventure, one that had such potentially grave consequences for him both in the present and in what might follow. I winced with remorse at how I’d just rebuked him for having said that my exile came at just the right time for his own affairs, so I whispered to him, pressing his arm:

  “My brother, I owe you an apology for the brusque way I just treated you. I beg you to forgive me.”

  “It’s nothing,” he replied. “I spoke without thinking, and your remark did not wound me. My brother, let’s surprise this rascal in his lair! Once we find the trap, victory is ours! I can’t wait to see the look on this fellow’s face!”

  And so, proceeding from the tethered horse to look for its rider, and finding every door in the needle shop open, so anxious was the fellow to flee once his shot had been fired, we came upon him from behind as he sat on a stool looking out of the front window, from where he could shoot me as I opened the door to my lodgings.

  “All right,” I said quietly, putting the
point of my sword in his neck, “put down your arm, my friend, and show us your face!”

  Which he did, turning suddenly and seeing our three swords surrounding him.

  “What’s this?” he stuttered. “What business do you have with me who have none with you?”

  “Ah, but you do!” I said, looking at him at my leisure, frowning deeply, letting him sweat a bit in apprehension of the rope. He did not have as evil a face as I might have expected: though it was pudgy and ugly, with his upper lip deeply scarred and one ear missing, his were eyes neither menacing nor stupid.

  “I am,” I announced, “the Chevalier de Siorac.”

  “Good gentleman,” he replied, “I recognized you already. They pointed you out to me as you left the Louvre this morning. But isn’t this treachery to sneak up behind me while I was waiting for you to appear in the street before me?”

  “You’re the traitor,” observed Miroul as he placed the point of his knife on the man’s throat.

  “Good gentleman,” he said, without batting an eye, “if you’re going to kill me, get it over with. Don’t hand me over to the provost, who’ll torture me before hanging me, all of which is horrible, slow and painful.”

  His response made me look at him with less severity, remembering what Espoumel had told me in his jail cell in Montpellier.

  “There will be no torture,” I assured him, “if you answer my questions. First, your name.”

  “Nicolas Mérigot,” said the man, “but they call me ‘the Guard’.”

  “Where did you get that nickname?”

  “I was in the French Guards, but was thrown out for having robbed my sergeant.”

  “And your present employment?”

  “Hooligan and vagabond,” said Miroul.

  “Not only,” said Mérigot. “I’m a Paris boatman—side to side only.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not allowed to go upstream or downstream, just ferry. There are 500 of us, all outlaws.”

  “What? All of you?” said Giacomi.

  “It’s the tradition.”

  “What a pity,” mused Miroul, “that to take a boat across the river you have to put yourself in the hands of men who profess neither faith nor law!”

  “What are you saying?” cried Mérigot, outraged. “No faith? We’re all good Catholics and hold the Blessed Virgin in particular veneration.”

  “I thought,” I put in, “that it was the butchers of the slaughterhouses who venerated the Virgin.”

  “Well, they have their Virgin and we have ours, whom we carry in all our processions.”

  “Listen to this miserable idolater!” said Miroul in Provençal.

  But Giacomi was smiling, since he prayed to the Virgin every morning and evening and was nearly in love with her.

  “Mérigot,” I pressed, “who paid you to do this murder?”

  “A fellow who came and found me yesterday on the hay wharves. He bought me a bottle, we got talking and he offered me thirty écus.”

  “Thirty deniers!” corrected Miroul.

  “Monsieur,” objected Mérigot, looking at him with his watery eyes, “I would never have done this for so little.”

  “But why you,” I asked, “rather than somebody else?”

  “Because I’m an excellent shot, having been a member of the French Guards. Still, at first I refused to do it.”

  “And why was that?”

  “I’m a thief. I don’t deal in blood.”

  “So what changed your mind? The horse?”

  “They only lent it to me. Once I was outside Paris and I’d reached Saint-Cloud, I was supposed to attach it to a ring behind the village church, where this fellow was to pay me my écus.”

  “Or the prick of a stiletto to guarantee your silence.”

  “Ho! Ho!” said Mérigot, his eyes opening wide. “Not a bit of it! The fellow told me he was the major-domo of a great house, and, what’s more, that his master would be able to get me out of jail, if I were caught. I decided he must belong to Guise since he told me they had to kill you because you were for Navarre, that agent of the Devil.”

  “Well,” I laughed, “that’s interesting! So that’s what convinced you to ‘deal in blood’?” With my left hand, I opened my doublet to show him the medal of Mary that my mother had given to me on her deathbed, and that I still wear around my neck, and explained, “They misled you, Mérigot. I’m as good a Catholic as you are. The fellow is a cousin of mine with whom I’m involved in a lawsuit over an inheritance that he wants to win by killing me.”

  Mérigot was clearly quite surprised by this and visibly took every word as gospel, being the sort of hulking fellow who’s not got enough brains to cook an egg.

  “This man you’re talking about, what does he look like? Isn’t he kind of—”

  “Small,” said Mérigot, “with a thin face, black eyes and a scar under his lower lip.”

  “That’s him all right!” I exclaimed. “That’s definitely my cousin! But I’d already recognized his horse! Mérigot, don’t you think it’s a shame that these crafty scoundrels coerce you honest outlaws of the Seine to commit murders under the pretext and mantle of religion?”

  “It’s pure treason!” cried Mérigot, squeezing his hands into fists that were made for rowing against the fiercest winds on the river.

  “Miroul,” I prompted, “fetch me a pen and paper from our lodgings.”

  “Good gentleman,” pleaded Mérigot, “what are you going to do with me?”

  “First of all, we’re going to write down your deposition, so that you won’t be tortured. After that, we’ll see.”

  When Miroul returned, I said to Giacomi in Provençal, which he’d learnt from Miroul during our stay in Mespech, “So, what shall we do with this fellow?”

  “If he were a member of the Magnificent’s household,” said Miroul before Giacomi could answer, “it would be a pleasure to kill him to get reparation for the blood they intended to spill. But since the rascal is simply a river rat…”

  “I think we ought to deliver him to the provost,” said Giacomi. “The law is the law. Without Alizon, Pierre would be dead now.”

  “I disagree,” countered Miroul. “If the Magnificent plucks him out of the provost’s hands, as he’s done for other men who were to be hanged, then this fellow will be indebted to him forever, and he’ll be all the more dangerous, given that he’s the biggest idiot in creation. No, Monsieur, free him or kill him. That’s my judgement.”

  “I’m going to think about it,” I replied in French. “But I’ll begin by writing his deposition.”

  I, Nicolas Mérigot, boatman on the Seine, unmarried, and frequenting the community of the hay wharves, do testify and swear as true on my death and salvation the following facts:

  There followed the report of his being hired to wait for me and assassinate me, and the description of the fellow who hired him. There was no reference to my supposedly being this fellow’s cousin. I closed the deposition as follows:

  Following the above confession, the Chevalier de Siorac, recognizing that I had been led into this enterprise through lies and misrepresentations, was good enough to pardon me for this attempt on his life, and, given that luckily no blood had been spilt, and that he, being a good Catholic, didn’t wish my blood to be spilt either, set me free, recommending that I tell the truth of this affair to all the other boatmen of the hay wharves, and gave me five écus to entertain them in his name and in the name of our natural and sovereign king, Henri III, praying God and the Blessed Virgin to keep him safe, in their holy favour.

  Hearing this, the boatman threw himself at my feet and kissed my hands, asking a thousand pardons and assuring me that I would never regret my goodness and mercy as long as he lived. This said, he began trembling from head to foot of his enormous body like a poplar leaf in the wind—he who, only a few minutes before, had faced down Miroul’s knife without batting an eye in his raw courage.

  “Mérigot, I am now heading back to my estate outs
ide Paris,” I explained, “but on my return I will have Miroul, my secretary, send for you”—and hearing this title, Miroul flushed with pleasure—“so that you can tell me about your life. However, if I discover that my evil cousin has come back to the hay wharves to hire you…”

  “I’ll throw him head over heels into the Seine!” Mérigot burst out, clenching his huge fists.

  “But don’t let him drown,” I cautioned. “Sign here, Mérigot, if you know how to write.”

  “Know my name, at least,” muttered Mérigot, who was sweating profusely, the goose feather appearing heavier in his big hands than an oar made of ash.

  After having extinguished the fuse of the arquebus (whose odour would have terrified our neighbours had we been out in the street), Miroul seized it, while Giacomi took hold of the bridle of the horse that was tethered in front of the needle shop, and my two companions, now in possession of our booty from this great battle, sent our prisoner off without weapons or rings, but very happy to have saved his neck from the noose and his guts from the points of our swords.

  Once back in my lodgings, I embraced my Angelina and hugged my children, then left Giacomi to ask my good wife about her twin sister and the hopes that she’d reawakened in him, and went downstairs with Miroul so that we could shut ourselves in the little study—where I’d received Mosca—in order to continue my correspondence.

  “Miroul,” I announced as I sat down opposite him at the table, “I need you to write a letter that I’m going to dictate.”

  “Well, Monsieur,” he cautioned, “my spelling is going to ruin it! It’s not as good as yours!”

  “Yes, but yours is better than the queen mother’s. So write, Miroul, without further stalling. And first of all the address:

  “TO MADAME DE LA VASSELIÈRE

  HÔTEL DE MONTPENSIER

  PARIS.”

  “Indeed! Is this the one I think it is?”

  “Or whose name you likely heard when you were listening at the curtain in the chapel.”