League of Spies

by Robert Merle

  No sooner had he entered the room than Giacomi closed the door behind him, and leant up against it in a way that would have made Pincers turn pale if his bright-red complexion had allowed it, but caused his eyes to roll uncontrollably in their sockets like a scared rodent’s and his lips to tremble like jelly:

  “Well, venerable doctor!” he lisped and stammered in French, giving me a deep bow. “I am exceedingly honoured—”

  “But I am not honoured in the least, priest!” I broke in rudely. “I would have been released had it not been for your testimony.”

  “Ah, Monsieur!” snivelled Pincers in Provençal. “The Sieur de Malvézie forced that testimony out of me with his dagger on my Adam’s apple!”

  “Yes, but once his dagger was removed, you repeated it to the bishop, you miscreant!”

  “Blessed Virgin!” whined Pincers. “How could I refuse my bishop when he was demanding it of me?”

  “Comrades!” I cried in French. “Did you hear that? What an odious trap was set for me!” And, at this, my three companions shook their heads gravely, including Fröhlich, who’d not understood a word of the Provençal, his eyes glued to the pâté de foie gras on the table.

  “Priest!” I commanded immediately. “Sit down on this stool, and you, Jacotte, bring his writing desk, and make haste, woman, make haste!… Shadow her, Miroul!”

  Which he did, except that this shadow had hands that surely would have slowed her errand had not Miroul feared my anger. As for Pincers, he was quite unhappy that anyone but him was allowed to fondle his housekeeper, but dared not breathe a word of reproach.

  “Priest,” I asked, when all was ready, “do you know how to write?”

  “Certainly,” replied Pincers, regaining his composure.

  “In Latin?”

  “Alas, no,” he confessed. “I can say my Mass in Latin and my prayers, but I’m not used to writing it.”

  “Then I’ll dictate it to you.”

  But this turned out to be impossible since his spelling was so full of mistakes. So, in the end, I wrote attestations for Samson and myself in Latin and he copied them, submissive and sweating from his effort, though not without resisting a bit when it came to the passage about the Mass.

  “Monsieur,” he said in French (perhaps so as not be understood by Jacotte), “that’s false: you don’t hear Mass; nor does your brother.”

  “We’ll hear it on Sunday when you come to say Mass at Mespech!”

  “But only once!” countered Pincers, as though terrified of angering me.

  “Well, the document doesn’t say that we hear Mass regularly.”

  “Ah, now that’s true!” conceded Pincers, who only half understood the Latin he’d copied.

  “Jacotte,” I said in Provençal, when her master had finished his note, “you will testify, if called to do so, that the priest of Marcuays wrote all of this without threats or harsh words of any kind; nor was he paid to do it, but did it of his own free will.”

  “Yes, Monsieur,” agreed Jacotte.

  “And here, my good girl,” I said, reaching in my purse, “are two sols to recompense you for any inconvenience we may have caused you.”

  “I thank you, Monsieur. It was no bother at all,” smiled Jacotte, as she threw an unrancorous look at Miroul over her shoulder. Miroul was still standing directly behind her, his two hands on her hips, which were as large as her big strong shoulders, though her stomach was far from large since, unlike her master, she didn’t drink like a shoe with a hole in it, but worked from dawn to dusk and sometimes all night, according to some—although she seemed quite happy to be so variously occupied.

  “Priest,” I soothed, as I slipped the two attestations in my doublet, “since you have written this, which is God’s truth, you have thereby righted the wrongs that you were constrained to do against me.”

  “Monsieur,” replied Pincers, so greatly relieved that his voice was now more assured, “I would be most happy if you were to forgive me, and your father as well, for these unfortunate testimonies.”

  At this, and not wishing to over-reassure him, I rose and, turning away, held my boots up to the fire that was crackling in the hearth, and realized that the fellow was less careful about his firewood than we were at Mespech, since his flock provided him with his wood, his wine cellar and his venison, and filled his larder with liver pâté. Indeed, there wasn’t a lamb in this flock, any more than in the parish at Taniès, who, in addition to his annual tithes, didn’t make sacrifices every month, good years and bad, to lavish provender on his pastor. So, in exchange for a few paternosters, the hypocrite lived like a rat in a wheel of cheese, his back to a warm fire, his stomach filled with delicious meals and his bed with Jacotte. The more I thought about this, the more it pained me to ingratiate myself with him, since he was nothing but the eyes and ears of the bishop of Sarlat, whom he visited each week, riding either on some labourer’s cart or on his mule. But I didn’t want him to go and undo verbally the Latin attestations I’d got him to sign.

  “Priest,” I said, “I’ve heard tell that the beautiful statue of the Blessed Virgin in the church at Marcuays has had all her paint rubbed away by the hands of the faithful, who need to touch her while praying.”

  “’Tis true, alas!” confirmed Pincers with a huge sigh, his face suddenly illuminated. “But the parish has no funds with which to regild her.”

  “Here,” I offered, placing an écu on the table, “perhaps this will help return her shine. This gift,” I added in French, holding up my palm to silence his gush of thanks, “should remain a secret in both Marcuays and Taniès, but not from you-know-who in Sarlat, where I hope he will see me in a better light, as one whose life was preserved by the Duc d’Anjou and the king in the travails he had to endure.”

  “Monsieur,” Pincers confirmed, bowing deeply, “I can assure you that it shall be as you wish; and, as for me, I will spare no effort to make it so.”

  As we stepped from his little nest, a cold breeze slapped us in the face, and the sudden chill seemed to be a harbinger of snow rather than rain.

  “Well, Monsieur,” said my lively and wiry valet as he pulled his mount up next to mine, leaving Giacomi and Fröhlich in the rearguard, our horses’ shoes ringing strangely on the rocky road, “is it not a damnable offence to give money to gild a papist idol?”

  “Well, this cost me only one écu,” I pointed out, “whereas it cost the Brethren 500 écus to win the bishop’s approval for their purchase of Mespech, since Fontenac was so opposed to our Huguenot presence.”

  “But an idol, Monsieur!”

  “Well, Miroul,” I joked, “to gild her arouses no guilt, as long as one doesn’t worship her.”

  “But to so adorn her makes others adore her!” rejoined Miroul, without missing a beat, for, valet though he was, he loved puns and plays on words as much as any Italian courtier.

  “No matter, Miroul,” I replied. “What do we care if the villagers kiss her hands and feet? Should my sweet brother be prevented from marrying his Gertrude, should I be forbidden to marry Angelina simply because a few colours are splashed on a piece of wood? It seems to me this kind of talk is all too easy for you, Miroul!”

  “What do you mean, Monsieur?”

  “Well, my Miroul, you’re lucky enough to be in love with a Huguenot, whom you can marry without all of these ruses and abuses!”

  At which, had the night not been dark as pitch, I would have seen Miroul turn scarlet, so thoroughly was he bewitched by his chaste Florine, yet so attached to me that he’d promised not to marry her before I’d led my Angelina to the altar. This was a promise I’d never have dreamt of exacting from my good Miroul, since my own marriage prospects were so precarious. Monsieur de Montcalm was so tyrannized by his confessor that he couldn’t accept a heretic for a son-in-law, even though I’d saved his life and those of his wife and daughter in a fight against the outlaws of Barbentane, who were holding them captive. But luckily Angelina and Madame de Montcalm were on my side, and, i
n their letters to me, encouraged me to continue to hope, since this confessor was old and infirm, and they hoped to replace him soon with Father Anselm, who was Montcalm’s secretary and fond of me since we’d fought together against the outlaws, as I’ve recounted elsewhere.

  Lest the reader judge me for having worked so hard to obtain attestations that Samson and I had been baptized in the “true faith”, but not sought the same document for my brother François, I should explain that this would have served no purpose, since Diane was lodged in the Château de Fontenac, and their marriage must necessarily be celebrated in Marcuays, under the watchful eye of the bishop of Sarlat, who was very little inclined to give away the advantage the papists had secured on St Bartholomew’s eve. For I have to say that the massacre perpetrated in Paris and in cities throughout the kingdom had struck such terror into the hearts of the survivors that a large number of them—excepting those who were to fight so valiantly against the king at La Rochelle—either tried to accommodate themselves with the papists or simply converted straightaway to the Roman Church, among them Rosier, our good pastor in Paris, who preferred to live a Catholic than die a Huguenot. The Brethren, on the other hand, who’d never taken up arms against their king, felt they had little to fear from him, and found ways to make peace with the local clergy, going so far as to grant them, gratis pro Deo,* a property that we possessed in Sarlat so that a monastery of Capuchin monks could be built to allow them to enlarge their community.

  At the same time, my friend Quéribus, who enjoyed the favour of the Duc d’Anjou, not only spread the word throughout the Sarlat region that I, too, benefited from the duc’s good graces—which wasn’t exactly false since the duc had given me 200 écus from his treasury—but that the duc had personally assured my safety during the night of 23rd August, a happy lie that I repeated as often as I could, since nothing protects a man better than princely protection, even if it’s merely a rumour.

  However, even if these prudent steps—and I include those of the Brethren with my own—had arranged things in the Sarlat region so well that we felt quite assured of our safety, it was nevertheless quite improbable that our bishop would consent to the marriage of Diane de Fontenac with a heretic, unless François agreed to convert—which he doubtless would have done with my father’s consent, had not Sauveterre imposed his unshakeable rigour on us all.

  All of which is not to say that every bishop in the kingdom, even after the St Bartholomew’s day massacre, was as implacable as ours. Some, for whom their families and alliances came first, even went so far as to declare that it could be profitable for the Church if papist women were allowed to marry Huguenots on condition that their children be raised in the religion of their mother, thereby allowing the Huguenot faith to die out with no hope of perpetuating itself. They argued that this form of extirpation of the heresy could be accomplished without struggle or injury, but ultimately by the sweet intervention of women.

  No, not all the prelates in the kingdom were as haughty and fierce as our bishop of Sarlat! His opposition had forced Gertrude to resort to her flexible Norman priest to celebrate her marriage, on the sole condition that she produce the Latin attestation we’d sweated out of Pincers, which, rushing upstairs to her warm, brightly lit room, I presented to the lady, who slipped it between her breasts, where it was assuredly more happily ensconced than in my doublet, which was frozen from the cold winds and covered with snowflakes.

  “Well, my brother! How good, brave and caring you are!” cried Gertrude, who was so happy she didn’t even know what she was saying, and threw her arms around me in a fond embrace.

  “Miroul,” I said to my good valet, who was watching this with a twinkle in his brown eye, “go and tell my father that it’s snowing, and ask him to have a fire lit in the fireplaces at either end of the great hall. It’s getting cold enough to crack a stone out there!”

  “At your service!” called Miroul over his shoulder, happy enough to rush off to the kitchen where Florine, the blonde Huguenot wench he’d saved from the St Bartholomew’s day massacre, was helping la Maligou prepare the evening meal. It was hard to believe that la Maligou was the mother of my slender little viper Little Sissy, for she was a corpulent woman in every aspect—stomach, breasts and buttocks—and was now wailing like an abandoned heifer since she’d been fighting a bout of diarrhoea for three days.

  There was a knock at Gertrude’s door, and Zara, consenting to interrupt her application of more unguents to her hands, went to open it. Baron de Quéribus stepped into the room, entirely covered with snowflakes since he’d galloped all the way from Puymartin to Mespech in order to dine with us. He was dog-tired, but splendidly clad and remarkably handsome, with blond hair, blue eyes, dark eyebrows, chiselled features and such youthfulness in his sunny smile that you couldn’t help liking him despite his swagger. For, as one of the favourites of Anjou’s entourage, he seemed always to put on such airs, with his svelte figure, his feet planted proudly, his hand on his hip.

  “By my conscience!” he burst out. “It’s snowing so hard you can’t tell the road from the fields! And the cold pierces right through you! Madame, I throw myself at your knees!” But he was careful to kiss only her hand and not to take her in his arms, hoping to convince me that he remembered our agreement. On me, however, he lavished a great hug.

  “Madame,” observed Zara, who, though she professed not to like men, couldn’t do without their adulation, “the baron likes Monsieur de Siorac better than us! What’s more, they resemble each other like peas in a pod. It’s as though, when the baron looks at Monsieur de Siorac, he thinks he’s looking in a mirror! So that’s why he loves him better than us!”

  “Oh, Zara, what are you saying?” cried Quéribus, and, wheeling around on his heels, he seized her waist and held her to him. “Do you think I could ever forget you, beautiful Zara, and that I don’t love you and your mistress more than anyone alive? God alive! I’m like to die,” he continued, his voice rising in pitch, as he swore like Charles IX on a tennis court, but careful nevertheless to ensure that the Brethren could not hear him, given his respect for them.

  “Baron, if you love me,” cooed Gertrude, “you will not delay your departure another minute, since I have some business in Normandy that cannot wait!”

  “Ha!” laughed Quéribus, glancing at me conspiratorially. “If this business is so dear to you, I promise not to crawl like a tortoise! However, I cannot start back until the fifteenth of November.”

  “The fifteenth of November!” cried Gertrude, which Zara immediately echoed:

  “The fifteenth of November!”

  “Oh, Monsieur,” pouted Gertrude, “that’s such a long time! What a bore and a pain to have to wait till then!”

  “Madame,” Quéribus replied with a bow, “though I’d love to accommodate you, I cannot do so any earlier. My cousin Puymartin is inviting the nobility of the Sarlat region to a great soirée in my honour on the tenth of November, where I expect to enjoy myself deliriously. I don’t think I’ll be recovered from my fatigue until the fifteenth.”

  “What?” gasped Gertrude, her eyes lighting up and suddenly all ears. “A soirée? A great celebration! The tenth? Will there be dancing? Will I be invited?”

  “But of course, Madame!” laughed Quéribus. “Along with your betrothed and his brother here, and François, and Catherine, and the Brethren of Mespech.”

  “And what about me?” asked Zara coyly.

  “That goes without saying!” roared Quéribus, somewhat derisively, it seemed to me. “How could I deprive such a noble lady of the company of her lady-in-waiting?” he continued with a somewhat mocking smile, for secretly he did not believe the lady to be so noble, since Gertrude was a member of la noblesse de robe and he the more ancient and knighted la noblesse d’épée.†

  “Well then!” cried Gertrude, running to embrace her chambermaid. “Did you hear, Zara? A soirée! The tenth! With all the nobles in Sarlat. In Puymartin’s chateau!”

  Of course, there w
as no possibility (as Quéribus would have pointed out) that Zara hadn’t heard, especially since Gertrude reminded her of the event several more times, and so delighted was she to be invited to such a celebration that she forgot all about her haste to go to marry my brother in Normandy.

  The object of this forgetting made his entrance at that very moment, waving a flagon containing a liquor of a particularly unappetizing greenish colour, on which his blue eyes were so happily fixated that he appeared not to notice any of those present, not even Gertrude, whom he now approached without even seeing her—like filings drawn to a magnet.

  “Well, my pretty Samson,” she cried, running to his side like a hen to her chick, “look at you! You’re not wearing your collar, your doublet’s all unbuttoned and your sleeves are rolled up! Your socks are falling down and your hair looks like a distaff that’s got all tangled up!”

  “My love,” he replied softly, his innocent face looking like that of a saint in a stained-glass window, “I’ve spent the last five hours concocting this medicine”—at this, he brandished the flagon—“out of twelve different elements, some extracted, some sublimated or ground to powder; carefully combined according to my own prescription, they will cure the stomach disorders that la Maligou is suffering from.”

  At this, Quéribus, ever the gallant, could hardly suppress his laughter, and turned away, attempting to stifle his mirth.