A dapper-looking officer crossed the threshold with a stiff, hurried gait. He wore a ceremonial doublet and a saber whose handle was engraved with the arms of the Holy See. The chamberlain scurried after him, his nose to the ground, his back stooped. The officer stopped dead at the foot of the Papal throne and stood to attention, grotesquely frozen. With this man, Paul II did not need to bother with the mannered tone or the air of thoughtful benevolence he had to assume to address archbishops and rulers. He could speak openly, get straight to the point. In the raucous voice of an old general, he informed the officer that the Jews had just declared war on Rome.
34
Aisha could not hold back a derisive smile at the sight of the valiant escort accorded them by Gamliel. As thin as a piece of string and as pale as a sheet, the young man was wearing a black caftan several sizes too large for him. As for François, it struck him that if the fellow were planted in the middle of a field of barley with his arms outstretched, he would make an excellent scarecrow. But Brother Paul hastened to assure them that beneath that thin frame of a budding Talmudist was concealed one of the best-trained warriors in the Brotherhood. A descendant of the noble line of shomerim, the ancient guardians of the Temple, he had mastered both the secret art of Mongol boxing and the use of Moorish daggers. And, like his ancestors, he was an excellent book hunter. This last remark duly impressed François, who now saw the newcomer in a better light.
Quite moved, and with several drinks already under his belt, the prior wrapped François and Aisha in his huge arms, almost suffocating them. He muttered a short blessing before handing them over to the young mercenary, who, without saying a word, immediately began leading his protégés down into the valley. François was sorry to have to leave Brother Paul, whom he saw as his only protector in this unknown land. He had felt safe with him. But Brother Paul had refused to divulge where the Brotherhood hid the statement dictated by Jesus before he was handed over to the Romans. He preferred it to remain secret. Men were not ready to receive its message. And besides, he had said with a laugh, they wouldn’t like it at all.
Standing in the doorway of the chapel, Brother Médard watched them depart, telling himself that those three would not get far. He was jealous of their youth, of their hopes. Above all, he envied them for taking the road that led to the desert. He had lived there as a hermit at the beginning of his long spiritual journey. He had crisscrossed its ravines and wadis for months, meditated in its caves or at the top of its plateaus, calling in vain on the Lord, his throat parched with thirst, his limbs twisted by hunger. And then, when his strength was almost gone, he had been rescued by Brother Paul, that joyful servant of God, that good soul, solid and simple, tormented by no anxieties, assailed by no doubts. When they got to the monastery, the prior had showed him the library, not without pride, and told him that he thought it a pity to look for revelations in the sand when books were overflowing with them. That was how Médard had become an archivist—and still searched for his God, wandering between the shelves in the gloom of a cellar.
Toward noon, the young Jew spoke for the first time and ordered a halt. He gently led Aisha to the shade of a row of cypresses and there handed her a goatskin, smiling with a gallant courtesy that somewhat irritated François.
“My name is Eviatar, after the dissident priest close to King David.”
This brief introduction over, Eviatar lifted the ends of his caftan and nimbly climbed to the top of a tree. Perched on a branch, he scrutinized the horizon. The branch barely bent beneath his weight. He sat there perfectly motionless, sniffing the countryside. Satisfied that there was nobody prowling in the vicinity, he jumped back down, bending his knees to soften his fall like a cat. Then, in prefect Arabic, he asked Aisha if she was hungry, already pulling from his bag some oatcakes grilled in oil and thyme and spread with a paste of crushed olives.
As evening fell, the three of them reached a hillock, the top of which was strewn with heaps of stones and bricks, marking the site of a destroyed village. Eviatar advanced cautiously. Trying to avoid a thornbush, François almost fell into a pit. Eviatar pulled him back at the last moment. François looked down. The hole was a deep one, spiraling downwards as if hollowed by the twists and turns of a giant snake. Its sheer sides bristled with gnarled, clawlike roots that clung desperately to every bump in the rock in order not to tumble into the abyss. The air rushed into that cavity with a whistle, as if sucked in by the emptiness. Terrified, Aisha recoiled. François noticed suddenly that the edges of the hole were strewn with dried flowers, ossicles, amulets, and spent candles. His surprise amused Eviatar, who refrained from revealing to him what subterranean monster these offerings were intended for. He did not want to scare Aisha, who was already trembling with fear. It was only later, as they walked, that Eviatar, after making sure that she could not hear them, revealed to François the name of the mysterious place. He did not know through what misunderstanding the Hebrew Tel Megiddo, a simple town, a way station, had become, both in Arabic and in Latin, Armageddon. It was there, at the end of days, in the bloody era of Gog and Magog, that Lucifer would be defeated by the good angel. The pit into which François had almost fallen was the lair of the beast, the gate to darkness. Either that, or it was a disused sewer. François smiled, sharing his guide’s skepticism. But Eviatar froze suddenly, and ordered them not to make any noise. A distant rumble came out of the darkness. It echoed in their eardrums, insistent, amplified by the peaceful silence of the meadows. François stiffened, ready to see the Horsemen of the Apocalypse loom up. Aisha stood rigid behind him, but in her case it was the djinns she was preparing to confront. Eviatar burst out laughing, and pointed to the buzzing hives of a beekeeper behind the bushes. François, taking the joke in good part, patted Eviatar on the shoulder. But Aisha watched the flight of the insects with suspicion. Their swarms whirled in serried ranks in the moonlight, like a host of demons.
Day after day, Aisha and François let themselves meekly be led by Eviatar, walking blindly along winding paths, climbing the hillsides, yelling like children as they ran down the steep slopes.
After many sudden changes of direction, François realized that the itinerary had not been fixed in advance. Eviatar chose their route on the spur of the moment or according to his mood, not hesitating to retrace his steps, sometimes even wasting half a day’s walking in order to flee some bad omen: gazelles running away in panic, vultures circling, horse droppings. Or else he would sniff the breeze and decide to follow the pleasant scent of a vegetable garden, the rancid aroma of a grape harvest, the stench of a herd of goats. Sometimes he walked alongside a shepherd in order to discover a watering place he did not know, to buy a little milk from him, to inquire about recent movements of patrols, or quite simply to chat for a while. Of all those he met, whether they were artisans, farmers, or peddlers, however shabby they might be, he asked if there were any old parchments for sale in the area. Some raised their arms and smiled stupidly. Most could not even read. Others indicated the workshop of a tanner who salvaged hides or the recent passing of a caravan of merchants. François found Eviatar’s requests somewhat comical. Yet the people showed no surprise, answering in a friendly fashion as if he had asked them where to buy fresh eggs or oranges.
The brief conversations in which François and Eviatar engaged began to weave ties of complicity between them that were hesitant at first. In spite of having to speak in an unappetizing mixture of Greek, catechism Hebrew, and a smattering of Moorish, the two men soon discovered that they shared a similar sense of humor, salty but not sour. These feats of language greatly amused Aisha, who discovered how much François liked to hear himself talk. For him, everything was word, just as, for a painter, everything was color. Even the trees spoke. Even the stones had something to say. Only Aisha kept quiet. Her silence irritated François most of the time. Except when he became aware of its subtle gentleness. She was one of those muses, at once haughty and full of humility, of which the bibles spoke.
Unless she was quite simply acting a role, as Colin had said. If he could see François right now, Colin would be in seventh heaven. He’d be able to tell all his cronies how his good friend Villon had gone down into the desert, without a white donkey or disciples, on the arms of a young girl and a little runt, one a Saracen and the other as Jewish as you could hope to find. François could imagine Colin surrounded by the Coquillards, their beaming faces turned red by the fire, raising their glasses to the health of a brilliant storyteller.
But he was quite wrong.
35
A line of cattle breeders leaving the fair to return home slowed the progress of the convoy. Fat, with pink cheeks and long thick mustaches, they led their livestock through the narrow streets, forcing the passersby to take shelter in doorways. Colin cursed. His three wagons were stuck at a crossroads. But he preferred to wait rather than go down the avenue that went past the palace of the Popes. The imposing buildings of the Papal legation terrified him.
His fears amused the men of the Brotherhood who were with him. In Avignon, even the Jews had nothing to fear from the dreaded officers of the Church. Cardinals and archbishops came here to rest, talk, and eat. No sycophant of the Inquisition or man-at-arms was lying in wait. Peddlers, street vendors, and troupes of actors circulated freely throughout the Comtat, as far as the borders of Provence. The young men from Palestine were dreading the moment when they would leave this blessed region and proceed to Paris, which Colin was so impatient to see again. Then it would be their turn to be afraid. They did not fear so much the constabulary as the bands of brigands prowling the forests, or the patrols of mercenaries pillaging farms and villages on behalf of the local landowners. From the limits of the Comtat as far as the Île-de-France stretched a barbaric, brutal land, in places just as wild as the borders of Russia or Africa.
Colin, who had done all he could to pass unnoticed, almost fainted when his convoy at last reached the Jewish quarter. The community had arranged a welcome banquet for them in the courtyard of the great synagogue. Children laughed and danced, women bustled around huge cauldrons. The men had put on their party clothes. Set up in the open air, noisy and somewhat chaotic, this joyful reception was better suited to a wedding meal than a secret meeting.
Rabbis wrapped in their prayer shawls, well-dressed merchants, and beggars in moth-eaten caftans pressed around the young men from Canaan. They bombarded them with questions in Hebrew, questions the visitors were unable to answer. The worshippers asked for news of their families, enquired about the weather, the product of the harvest, as if the strangers they were addressing came from a nearby village. Had the harvest given a good yield? Had they finally sealed the cracks that had been letting the rain into the tomb of Rabbi Yohanan, blessed be his memory? Was the venerated Avshalom of Tiberias still alive? How old was that sage of sages? Sixty-eight? May the Almighty grant him long life! Amen!
A wrinkled old man asked Colin after the health of Rabbi Gamliel ben Sira, the gaon of Safed. Colin did not understand the question, which was asked in Hebrew, but recognized the name. Another Jew translated, explaining that gaon meant something like “genius”, a title that was only given to the greatest doctors of the Law. When Colin, unimpressed by these Judaic letters of nobility, retorted that he knew perfectly well who this Gamliel was and that he had debated with him more than once, the old man prostrated himself and kissed his hands.
Meanwhile, Federico lingered in Genoa long enough to make sure that Colin had reached Avignon without incident. That at least was his pretext. He had refrained from revealing to his men that a mission of the highest importance was waiting for him in this very place. It represented a crucial phase of the operation, which would put an end to all desire for a crusade to the Holy Land. If the stratagem succeeded, the Catholic armies would be repulsed without a single cannon being fired. They would withdraw from the Mediterranean, renouncing once and for all the idea of taking back Jerusalem. But above all, they would wage war on each other.
The Brotherhood was worried about the recent expansion in maritime activity among the Christians. Their growing fleets, rapid and well-equipped, were a much more alarming threat than armies arriving by land. Unlike cavalrymen, often exhausted after long journeys and sated with the pillage carried out on the way, sea captains could get straight to the shores of Palestine with rested troops, provisions, and holds filled with ammunition. Not to mention the fact that arriving by sea gave them the advantage of surprise and a mobility far superior to any land assault. In the past, only a few ships lingered on the high seas, reaching Acre or Jaffa in a pitiful state, forced to repair the damage and get fresh supplies before being in any condition to mount an attack. Now, dashing squadrons cut through the waves, confronting currents and eddies without difficulty. What the Brotherhood dreaded more than anything was the ardor of the Spanish, who, for a pious vow or even at the mere whim of an admiral, would set sail wherever they wanted. Forced to take the initiative, Jerusalem had decided to send all these vessels somewhere else.
36
The landscape was becoming barer, the vegetation more stunted, the villages scarcer and more wretched, the fields stonier. The brick houses disappeared, then those of dried clay, then those of mud mixed with straw. All that could be seen were a few canvas tents scattered here and there on the sides of the hills. Even though the heat was becoming more intense, the dry air caressed the lungs, invigorating them, purifying them. Progress was slow now, but less painful than before.
Eviatar and Aisha advanced with firm steps, as confidently as if they were walking along the main street of a town. But François dragged behind, stumbled, veered off course, like a boat adrift. He felt a strange sensation of emptiness that seemed to grow from day to day as he continued on his long walk southward. The threads of his past were fraying, scrap by scrap, clinging to the thorny shrubs lining the road. His regrets, his hopes were flying away, borne on the wind, burned by the sun, as if a mysterious thief were robbing him of them one by one. François sometimes turned helplessly and peered at the scrub in search of the brigand who was taking possession of his soul. The birds whirling in the sky, the ibexes running down the sunstruck slopes toward the shade, the scorpions stumbling through the brambles had become the silent accomplices of this elusive bandit who had still not shown himself. François could feel his hot breath taunting him, sometimes from a distance, sometimes from close by, depending on the wind. It penetrated his nostrils with a smell of burning. As he approached a promontory, the presence of this stealer of souls suddenly became more luminous. François sensed it in the increasingly hot and oppressive air. And now the culprit appeared all at once, on the other side of the plateau.
Eviatar and Aisha watched François, letting him discover the tide of solitude and silence overwhelming him. Seized with dizziness, he stooped and looked for the support of a rock, a bush, within the immensity. Then, little by little, he rose to his full height and confronted it. He opened his eyes wide to see his adversary’s face, but nothing moved. No thief emerged to rob him.
Intoxicated by space, drunk on light, he opened his arms wide and began turning on the spot, grasping at the air with his hands as if trying to embrace the infinite. Dancing almost, he took a little step toward Eviatar and whispered to him in confidence that the place was a little lacking in taverns. And then, as if ashamed of his remark, he suddenly took off his tricorn, and bowed low to the majestic stretch of land. Eviatar looked overjoyed. He had been dreading François’s hesitations. But the commander of the Brotherhood had been counting on this moment. He had said so to Gamliel, insisting on a tortuous route in order to prepare Villon, to initiate him. The recipe was infallible. First of all, a long walk to relieve the Frenchman of the futile considerations with which he was encumbered, to free him from the ghosts that haunted him. Next, a more relaxed progress that allayed his suspicions, making him more inclined to take to the open road. And then, suddenly, the abrupt collision with the d
esert and his new destiny.
Conscious of the trick that was being played on him, François had gladly lent himself to it. This land was finally reaching out its arms to him. Soon he would accomplish what he had come here for. Not Chartier’s mission, nor the book hunters’ operation, but his own exploit. This land expected nothing less of his visit, he knew. He felt at home here, in spite of all its mysteries. This was the homeland of prophets and psalmists, peasants and fallen angels, the worst despair and the craziest dreams. It had opened its doors to him, given him one of its loveliest daughters, and led him to this desert because he too was a peasant and a psalmist and, in his way, a good apostle. He could not disappoint them. Bishops and kings, emirs and rabbis, it hardly mattered. He would be able to pull the wool over their eyes. What counted now was a feat of arms that would again make him master of his own fate. A sensational poem, some incredible robbery, a fist-rate swindle? Thanks to which testament would François de Montcorbier, known as Villon, become a legend? His own, published clandestinely, or Christ’s, rescued from the hands of the zealots who were keeping it hostage here?
Eviatar was pleased with the ease with which the Frenchman had passed this test. He would have liked to shake his hand. But François was already advancing with a resolute step, the first to begin the descent, impatient to enter the unknown kingdom. The sandy track down which he was running so joyfully was leading him toward a country with imprecise borders, virgin dunes, far off the beaten track.
The Brotherhood of Book Hunters Page 15
