by Robert Merle
I have only good news to share with you about Mespech. Everyone—including our animals and servants—is well, and I’m managing the chateau according to your wishes.
I regret, however, that I must inform you that, finally, I have converted to the Holy Roman and Apostolic Church, finding no other way to marry Diane, divide up her estate with Puymartin or inherit the title of Baron de Fontenac, which will be mine with the first male child she provides me.
The bishop of Sarlat wanted to make much of my conversion, and celebrated it in the cathedral. I suspected that these circumstances would be sad and painful for you, and so I preferred to convert in your absence and beg you not to resent me for it. I desire nothing more than your affection and assure you that I will, till the end of time, be,
With all my heart, your humble, obedient and devoted servant,
François de Siorac
“Well,” sighed my father, “what do you think?”
Of course, I was in an awkward position, not at all liking the stiff tone of this very correct letter, but not wishing to criticize my older brother (though, in truth, I didn’t like him) and feeling, almost in spite of myself, some sympathy for his reasons. “What do I think?” I temporized.
“Yes, tell me!”
“That I don’t know what I myself would have done, if I’d been in François’s predicament, given that the bishop of Sarlat is not as accommodating as Father Anselm.”
I just want you to say, Pierre,” said the Baron de Mespech, “that you would have consulted me before you acted!”
“Assuredly so! But François is François: he wouldn’t have dared confront you.”
“In short, he’s a coward!” cried my father as he stood up abruptly and, frowning, began pacing back and forth in the room. “And what’s worse,” he continued furiously, “a Catholic coward!”
“Well, not entirely a coward,” I observed. “If, someday, someone tries to take something from him, he’ll fight tooth and nail!”
“Don’t defend him!” cried my father, suddenly drunk with rage. “That little hypocrite knew full well even before my departure that he was going to change sides, and said nothing to me! And now he tells me in this note that he ‘desires nothing more than my affection’! And this ‘with all his heart’! But—’sblood!—would he have dared to switch camps while Sauveterre was alive, and still in Mespech? Oh, Pierre, I’m devastated to think that our Huguenot faith will have lasted but the length of my brief life, the second Baron de Mespech returning to the Catholic faith like a dog to his vomit, along with all my grandchildren—all of them! The sons and daughters of François—and Samson! And Catherine! And you as well!—will be raised and nursed on papist idolatries from the minute they’re in swaddling clothes!”
I fell silent for a few moments and walked to the window to look out on the daylight dropping in the west over the stony hills of Provence—more luminous than our Périgord but less verdant—having no idea how to answer my father, understanding his immense grief at seeing his religion abandoned successively by his descendants, even including me, alas, who loved him so well.
“Ah, Father,” I urged, after much reflection, “forgive François: his conversion isn’t, sadly enough, an isolated thing, but one among innumerable others after the twenty-fourth of August last. That’s the second harvest of the St Bartholomew’s day massacre: after so much grain cut down and crushed underfoot, now the priests are gleaning what’s left. Everyone lives in peril of death. You yourself, in order to appease the bishop of Sarlat, agreed to make a gift of land to the Capuchin monks, and invited Pincers to Mespech to say a Mass for our papist guests. I myself gave an écu to Pincers to have an idol regilded, and from now on, against my soul and body, I will be hearing Mass every day we remain here, being forced to become a Janus with two faces, one Catholic and the other Huguenot, like the Sephardim of Montpellier, who pay lip service to papism but remain faithful to their Jewish roots and traditions.”
“But the difference is that you go to Mass!” groaned my father.
“I hear it,” I smiled, “but as the saying goes, listening with only one ear to the fields and with the other to the city—secretly a stranger to this Roman cult.”
“You do perhaps, Pierre, but will your children?” asked Jean de Siorac with a sudden wave of tenderness that clouded his eyes with tears; and, stepping over to me, he threw his arms around me and embraced me tightly. “But your children! Your grandchildren!”
“I shall make very sure that they hear from my lips the unspeakable persecutions that we suffered at the hands of the priests. And who knows whether some of our family won’t, when things become less dangerous for us, return to the purity of our faith?”
“And yet, Pierre,” mused the Baron de Mespech, looking askance at me, “it seems to me that, of my four children, you are perhaps the least zealous of the lot on the question of religion. How does that happen?”
“It is because I hold zeal in great disdain, having seen the terrifying effects of it in Nîmes and in Paris. But, Father,” I continued, not wishing to get into a debate with him, “I beg you to allow me to withdraw. I promised Angelina to help her choose between two dresses for the evening meal, and she’s waiting for me in her room.”
“Well then, don’t delay any longer!” laughed my father. “The choice of which jewellery she will wear is very important to a woman in her wish to please us and please herself. If the gentle sex didn’t take so much care in their adornments, where would we find such beauty in our daily lives?”
The day finally came when it was time to take our leave of this excellent man and set out for Paris, leaving him to return to Périgord and live in a kind of double solitude at Mespech: that of a father abandoned by his children, and the equally bitter solitude of one who must watch his children turn their backs on the religion that not only had been the founding principle of their lives together, but was to have been the glue that bound a Huguenot line that joined their material prosperity to the truth of their purified beliefs.
Oh, such tears were shed at this parting, both by my sister Catherine, as enamoured as she was of her Quéribus (with whom she seemed to be floating on a cloud of mad happiness), and by my Angelina, whose natural compassion told her how painful this separation was for the Baron de Mespech. But I have to add, without any shame whatsoever, that I too wept to be separated from this man, whom I cherished as much for his good and pure mettle as for certain weaknesses that we shared and that had drawn us even closer.
I was to remember the raw bitterness of this parting several years later when, hearing Mass with the king in the chapel at the Hôtel de Bourbon (opposite the Louvre), I observed two lords who had entered the chapel in the king’s retinue, but who appeared to be listening to the Catholic service with a sad and bitter expression, as if what they were hearing made them sick to their stomachs. And Fogacer, being seated next to me, and his sharp eyes noticing the direction I was looking in, smiled at me with a knowing look, but said not a word. A few moments later, as we were standing in the Salle des Caryatides, waiting to be summoned by the king, leaning against one of those giant statues sculpted by Jean Goujon, my friend asked me whether, as a great petticoat-chaser, I wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the giant stature of these wenches were they to suddenly come alive, and I replied, laughing, “Not at all!” And, as I added in English, “You can’t have too much of a good thing!” I suddenly remembered the two grave faces of the gentlemen we’d seen at Mass, and asked Fogacer who they were and why I hadn’t seen them at court before. He told me their names (which I won’t repeat here) and added, sotto voce, “They’re like you, mi fili, lip-service Catholics but Huguenots at heart, who’ve just arrived here and whom the king has asked to ‘trim their sails’ if they want to serve him.”
“Trim their sails? What does that mean?”
“It’s a nautical term that His Majesty learnt recently and likes to use. It means reduce the size of your sails when the wind gets too blustery.”
&nbs
p; “Ah, certainly, God knows that’s how things are!”
“And, assuredly, God knows that’s how things are!” smiled Fogacer. “Mi fili, what’s the point of hearing Mass if you betray it by this ‘certainly’?” To which he added, “‘Certainly! Certainly!’ says the Huguenot, for he’s a man full of certitudes.”
“And the papist?”
“The papists are full of zeal. And, as I see it, very few of them today would allow themselves to be burnt at the stake for their faith.”
“Would the king die for his faith?”
“My dear chevalier,” replied Fogacer (using the title the king had conferred on me but a week previously, along with a small estate in Montfort-l’Amaury called “the Rugged Oak”), “don’t say ‘the king’—say, simply, ‘Henri’. That way, if someone overhears you, they won’t know whether you’re referring to the Duc de Guise, Henri de Navarre or ‘Henri the One-third’, who’s mocked by this sobriquet because the other two are making such inroads into his kingdom.”
“What an ugly and thoroughly demeaning expression,” I whispered, “which you’d be wise not to repeat!”
“Well, it’s because I’ve got a sharp tongue myself,” smiled Fogacer, arching his diabolical eyebrow, “though my heart is faithful to Henri.”
“But, venerable Dr Know-it-all, you haven’t answered my question about Henri’s religious convictions.”
“That’s because it’s a debatable point. Henri loves monks, the monastery and the cowl. He goes on pilgrimages. He goes on retreats. He walks in processions.”
“I know all that. He even puts on the hair shirt of the penitent and girds himself with a belt ringed with skulls.”
“He whips himself as well. But do you know why?” Fogacer continued, his eyes ablaze. “It’s because he’s trying to assuage his conscience, and, every time he does this, he immediately goes back to the trough of his usual delights.”
“Curb that evil tongue of yours! Answer me! Do you think Henri would die for his faith?”
“He’d probably more likely die for the faith of others, given that the Church is pushing Guise to hem him in both geographically and personally.”
“I’m astonished to hear you say so,” I laughed. “In the ten years that I’ve served him, I’ve heard Henri defend his zeal for serving the Church and for extirpating heresy at least ten times.”
“He’s trimming his sails!” replied Fogacer with that sinuous smile of his. “It’s a manoeuvre that serves Henri very well in tempestuous times. And, as you yourself said, the Devil knows that we’re in for some stormy weather!”
“I never mentioned the Devil! I said ‘God knows’!”
“And you really believe it’s God who’s breathing such fire and brimstone on our poor kingdom?”
*
I hope the reader will pardon this intrusive leap forward from 1574, the date of my marriage and my move to Paris, to 1584, a fateful year for the kingdom and for my good master “Henri the One-third”. The truth is that the ten intervening years were, for me, as calm and peaceful as a freshwater river winding through a prairie, and I feared boring my reader with tales of my domestic happiness. Not that there weren’t troubles and difficulties during those years, notably caused by the king’s brother, but in the main they seemed quite tranquil by comparison with the torrents of agitation and angry white-water rapids that engulfed us all in 1584.
It was on 6th May of that year that the first dark clouds appeared in the sky of France, announcing the storms that were to tear the kingdom apart and shake the throne. And I remember it was my handsome brother-in-law Quéribus who first brought me the news, one afternoon when he and my sister Catherine were visiting us in our lodgings on the rue du Champ-Fleuri, situated just a couple of steps from the Louvre. They were both waiting for us as I returned from the Louvre with Angelina, who was carrying our one-year-old, Olivier, her fifth child. Quéribus was magnificently decked out as usual, in a salmon-coloured doublet, grey stockings and a large lace ruff, his curly hair carefully arranged in ringlets under his pearl-studded cap, a diamond earring in his left ear, and wearing rings over his gloves on both hands. For our gallant, this was a somewhat modest ensemble compared to the sumptuous outfits he wore to court balls; he had at least a hundred costumes in his wardrobe that were as elegant as this one—enough so that he could wear a different suit every day, not wishing to be shamed by other glittery competitors in the presence of his king. Did I forget to mention the brown velvet cape he’d thrown over his shoulders, without which no gallant at the court would have dared show himself, even in the hottest weather?
I knew Quéribus was in my lodgings even before closing the door and spying him there, since the odour of his perfume outdid in strength the combined applications of Catherine and Angelina.
And, indeed, scarcely had I set foot in the dining hall before I saw him rushing towards me, arms outstretched, his face more heavily made up than those of most of the ladies of the court, his eyes darkened with mascara and his face so covered in ceruse that he avoided giving me the customary pecks on both cheeks, but threw his arm over my shoulders and lamented, “Ah, Pierre! Things are going from bad to worse in the kingdom. The king’s brother is dying!”
“What! Are you sure?”
“’Tis certain! I heard it from Marc Miron. As sickly as he already was, all dried out, bony, exhausted, Alençon’s now coughing his lungs out.”
“Well, by heaven, I won’t go mourning him!”
“Nor shall I!” agreed Quéribus.
“But stay!” cried Angelina in her usual concerned and caring way. “Will there be no one in the kingdom to shed a tear over this, our brother, who’s dying?”
“This ‘brother’,” corrected Quéribus, “was an execrable brother to our king. He raised armies against him. He created problems and fomented conflicts of all kinds. He’s a traitor to his blood! Unfaithful to his brother and sovereign.”
“It’s true,” conceded Catherine, “that Alençon is excessively ugly: small-boned, dark as a prune, his legs all bent, his face all swollen and pockmarked from smallpox. There was never a more despicable little runt in the whole of the Valois family!”
“And his soul is worse than his face,” added Quéribus, “being both cruel and cowardly.”
“Cruel?” said Angelina.
“Ah, there’s no doubt about it!” I confirmed. “In Issoire, Alençon had seventy-seven peasants murdered after they’d surrendered.”
“Well, as for that,” laughed the baron, “the Huguenots are like the Hydra of Lerna! Cut off one head and seven grow back!”
“Monsieur!” scolded Catherine, frowning haughtily. “If you make fun of my Huguenot relatives, you’ll find the door of my chambers closed to you tonight!”
“Madame my wife,” soothed Quéribus, kneeling before her, taking her hands in his and kissing them tenderly, “to such a punishment I’d prefer the wheel and rack! Forgive my little joke, I pray you!… The fact remains,” he added as he stood up, “that Alençon has been a calamity for this kingdom. He never contributed a thing to the welfare of France. And the worst part is that, having ill-served the king while alive, his death will be even worse for His Majesty.”
“But how can that be?” asked Angelina. “Can he really do any damage when he’s dead?”
“Alas, he can!” Quéribus explained. “His death raises the thorny question of succession, since, after ten years of marriage, Henri still has no heir. Alençon would have succeeded him, just as Henri succeeded Charles IX and Charles his brother François II.”
“But the Blessed Virgin may yet grant him a child,” ventured Angelina. “My sweet sister Catherine was childless for seven years before she brought fruit.”
“Assuredly, the Lord was gracious to me,” agreed Catherine, who, in her Huguenot heart (though she was, like me, constrained to hear Mass), could not bring herself to name the Virgin Mary as the author of this divine gift.
“Which is why,” Quéribus observed, “the kin
g has spent the last two days wearing out his royal shoes in pilgrimages from Notre-Dame de Paris to Notre-Dame de Chartres, and has got nothing more out of it than severely blistered feet, which the Chevalier de Siorac has been treating.”
“Which chevalier,” I laughed, “has been treating his own as well, and had to resole his shoes when he got back, though I’ve heard that His Majesty simply tossed his away, since he wasn’t raised with a Huguenot sense of economy.”
As I was saying this, our hungry little Olivier raised an ear-splitting cry, and Angelina immediately unlaced her bodice and gave him her breast, because I’d convinced her that no foreign breast would equal hers for milk, though I promised to find a wet nurse if her milk ever dried up. Which never happened.
We all four fell silent while this sweet spectacle continued, amazed and moved as we were by the beauty and generosity of the mother, as well as by the insatiable appetite of the little urchin.
When the babe had drunk his fill, Angelina silently signalled to me to take the child, and walk him back and forth so that the little devil would do his burp, while she relaced her bodice, looking all the while at me as if she were afraid I’d drop the nursling on the floor. At length I gave him back to her, and, as the little fellow was falling asleep in her arms, Florine came to take him from her and place him in his little cradle, which she rocked with her foot, while continuing her knitting.
“But I don’t understand why this question of succession is so vexing,” Catherine said. “If Heaven were not to grant Henri a son, I’ve heard my father say that the Bourbons would succeed the house of Valois, and that Henri de Navarre would be the legitimate heir to the throne.”
“Alas, my beloved,” said Quéribus, as he pulled a stool over to sit at her feet, “Navarre converted to the Roman Church after the St Bartholomew’s day massacre, with a knife at his throat. But once he escaped from the Louvre, which was nothing more than a gilded prison, he reconverted to the reformed religion, and so is thought to be not only a heretic but a relapsed one, and is in great danger of being excommunicated. Do you think we’ll see a heretic on the throne of France? Maybe there are some among the nobles who would accept this, but the people? Never. And the clergy would execrate him. Which is why Guise, who covets the throne but would never admit it, is promoting this idiot, the Cardinal de Bourbon, who’s a Bourbon of the cadet branch, and the uncle of Navarre.”
