League of Spies

by Robert Merle

  “He’s the English minister tasked with the security of the queen and, Lord knows, he keeps a good and sharp watch over her! Monsieur,” Mosca continued, rising, “I’m pressed for time and I know my escort risks catching cold waiting for me out there; I beg you to hear now the strangest news of all: Samarcas is being followed not only by my fly, but also by another, and that one’s employed by the English ambassador in Paris.”

  “Well,” I said, “that entirely explains the little role Samarcas is playing!”

  “I think so too.”

  And, making me a deep bow, and another to Giacomi, this fox-like Mosca took his leave, leaving my purse diminished but my mind enriched with a wealth of secrets that more than made up for it.

  “Monsieur,” said Miroul, his brown eye maliciously glowing, while his blue eye remained cold, “would you like me to tell you the real name of this Mosca?”

  “What? Miroul! You know who he is?”

  “Certainly, Monsieur, but I don’t know if I’ll say it, since I learnt it when ‘frittering away my time on the streets of Paris’ when you send me out with messages for your friends.”

  “Miroul, what are you saying?”

  “It’s just that you’re always scolding me for ‘frittering away my time’, with my nose in the air and my eyes wide open in the streets of the capital; always accusing me of wasting my time with your frowns and scowls!”

  “Come then, Miroul, speak! Speak! You’d try the patience of a papist saint the way you’re always thwarting your master’s will!”

  “Alas, Monsieur!” he countered, his eyes shining. “There you go again, finding fault with me. I only loiter in order to serve you, constantly enriching myself with thousands of details that I see and hear on the streets! Would I know what I know if I hadn’t stopped in front of the Grand Châtelet last Monday?”

  “Oh, you obstinate valet!” I cried. “Are you going to tell me or not?”

  “Monsieur,” Miroul replied, pretending to be angry, “if you insist on thinking me wicked then I’ll lose my tongue and shut up!”

  “Dammit, my man! I beg you! Enough with these complaints! Diga me!”§

  “If I’m ‘your’ man,” he replied, “then I can’t be so wicked as all that! And you ‘beg’ me, but your prayer is an order. But, Monsieur, are you going to keep criticizing me for ‘frittering away’ my time in Paris, seeing how my ‘frittering’ teaches me so much?”

  “Ah, Miroul!” cried Giacomi, who was growing red from impatience. “You have assuredly one of the best and most good-natured masters in Christendom! How many others would suffer such insufferable impertinence without taking the rod to you!”

  “Maestro,” replied Miroul, seriously and almost haughtily, “we are not on such terms, my master and I! He knows very well that I’d give anything (except Florine) to save his life, and that I serve him with love and respect, especially given that my savings in Bordeaux would allow me to set myself up if I wanted.”

  Having said this, he suddenly looked as if he were going to shed a tear—seeing which, I felt very chagrined that I should have made him unhappy, and with a knot in my throat took him in my arms and kissed his cheek. At this his brown eye lit up and a tear trickled down his cheek, so that, crying and laughing, like a ray of sun through the rain, he said, “Ah Monsieur! Did you really have to dress me down last Monday for half an hour’s lateness? What’s the point of living in Paris if you can’t stroll about as you want?”

  “Miroul,” I said soothingly, embracing him contritely, “should I beg your pardon?”

  “Ah, Monsieur, not on your life! That would be beneath you! But as for our man, here’s the news: last Monday, at about eight in the morning, as I was delivering a message for you, I saw three pickpockets being escorted from the Grand Châtelet, whom they were taking to hang at Montfaucon. Alas, for these poor fellows the week was beginning very badly.” (He laughed heartily at his little joke.) “And the one leading them, surrounded by the guards, pikes in their fists, was, as I learnt afterwards, the lieutenant of the provostry, Nicolas Poulain.”

  “What! Mosca?”

  “Ipse.¶ Unfortunately, badly lit as he was tonight, I only recognized him when he was leaving, otherwise I would have been able to whisper it to you in time to save you a handsome sum of money!”

  “What? What are you saying?”

  “Could he have extorted money from you if you’d known he was an officer of the king? One who, to be sure, is not so highly placed that you’d have seen him at court and been able to recognize him when he arrived here. Thus, it would seem, Monsieur,” added Miroul (who could not resist—in cauda venenum||—teaching me a lesson), “that it’s sometimes more profitable to stroll through the streets of Paris than to do so though the courtyards of the Louvre.”

  I smiled at this barb, but didn’t react, not knowing, after so many years spent side by side, which of us was the master—for the more I scolded him, the more he chided me, never missing an opportunity to get his revenge for any wounds I’d inflicted. And isn’t it always thus between master and servant whenever real affection exists between them? Even the king is, so to speak, “commanded” by those who obey him: by imparting to him only the news that they themselves want to hear, they end up governing to a great degree his reactions to it.

  My poor Giacomi was disconsolate to learn that his Larissa was so near, yet so inaccessible, imprisoned behind the walls of the abbey—where Samarcas had sequestered her doubtless because he’d discerned the progress that the maestro had made in the affections of his pupil, and, for this reason, no longer wanted to stay at the Montcalms’ lodgings, where the maestro was always welcome and from where he himself had so often to be absent, attending more to his business than to his prayers. As for me, it hadn’t escaped my notice that, for the last ten years, Giacomi had room only for Larissa in his heart—notwithstanding the humble petticoats he chased upon occasion, not wishing to live in total abstinence; but he refused any and all offers of marriage in the hope of one day taking Larissa as his wife. He seemed entirely unconcerned by the former disorders of the poor woman, since they’d been caused by “the devils that had managed to inhabit her”.

  And I couldn’t help thinking too that, if Samarcas were to disappear, the Montcalms wouldn’t have turned up their noses at this offer, since Giacomi was clearly a man of quality: he was in great favour with the king, who, in gratitude for his lessons, had ennobled him with the title of écuyer and enriched him with a little estate called la Surie—which Giacomi had also taken as his own name in order to “Frenchify” it. What’s more, since the royal fencing master, Monsieur Silvie, was getting old, Giacomi now had as his students some of the great lords of the kingdom, and had put their largesse to good use, buying a very beautiful house in the grand’rue Saint-Honoré, with gable and loggia, and though he lived modestly, people thought him more well-to-do than he was.

  As for the relationship between Larissa and Giacomi, though they’d been unable over these last ten years to exchange more than ten words, their blushes at seeing each other and pallor at parting from each other—not to mention, during every interview, the heaving chests, the oppressed hearts, the stuttering tongues and trembling hands, the sudden perspiration and weakness in the legs, and, above all (though they were virtually never alone), the mute eloquence of their shining and joyful eyes, drunk with yearning and blurry with tears—had allowed them silently to pledge their mutual and eternal fidelity to each other better than the whispered orisons of ten papist priests could have done.

  And thinking about this, in my great friendship for my brother Giacomi, and my brotherly love (less great, but perhaps more ambiguous) for my pretty sister Larissa (the ambiguity one more reason to want to join them together), I frequently imagined confronting Samarcas and, suddenly crossing swords with this progeny of the shadows, my “Jarnac’s thrust” pitted against his Jesuit’s feint, finally dispatching him. But this dream was like so many others: it never transpired. The outcome was qu
ite different, as we shall see.

  I took Giacomi into my fencing room, but fearing that if he unsheathed his sword for a lesson with me, in his present despair, he might put it through his own heart, I took him by the arm and walked him up and down, allowing him to let out all his anger and fury. His eyes were now shooting flames, now flowing with tears, and, from time to time, he gnashed his teeth, clenched his fists, stamped his foot or moaned, his head on my shoulder—all this accompanied by a flood of words that I could remember only half of, since the rest were in a Genoese dialect that I couldn’t follow at the speed he was talking.

  When he was finally exhausted from all this grief and anger, I made him sit down on a chest of arms and said:

  “My brother, as we take stock of everything Nicolas Poulain told us, what do we conclude? If the peril Larissa faces—of being locked up in an English jail as an accomplice to an assassination plot—is all too clear, we obviously can’t solve the situation by informing the Montcalms: they venerate Samarcas too much to believe our word against his. Moreover, to warn the Montcalms would be to warn Samarcas himself, who is, moreover, caught in the nets of both English and French spies. And it’s certainly not in the interests of our king, or of Queen Elizabeth, that he be forewarned.”

  “So what can we do in such a predicament?”

  “Verify that Samarcas is indeed lodged at the abbey, but do so without following him and without being seen, as Maître Fly recommended. In this way, we’ll know how much trust to place in Poulain and his stories.”

  I asked Gertrude du Luc to lend me her travel coach, and the next day, before dawn, Giacomi and I—dressed in black, our faces disguised by masks, with Miroul in the driving seat, his hat pulled well down over his eyes—posted ourselves on the little square opposite the great doors of the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. At this hour there were very few people other than a few ruffians in rags, who, seeing us stationed there, came limping out of their hovels like woodlice from a hole, and tried to steal our horses.

  Seeing this, we leapt out, swords unsheathed, and, with Miroul’s help, gave them such blows on their backs and backsides with the flats of our blades that they fled, never to return. After which we remained on guard, this area of Saint-Germain being, as everyone knows, of evil repute, in which there huddled many ramshackle dwellings, many falling into ruin, where there swarmed a collection of beggars, thieves, whores and pickpockets. It’s a miracle that in the middle of such a cesspool rose this beautiful, rich abbey (which was surrounded by abandoned fields so thickly covered with nettles and thistles that even an ass wouldn’t have found provender there), with walls so high that no ladder would have been tall enough to scale them, erected to protect its monks and treasures from the lowlifes who teemed at its feet.

  As the dawn was chilly for 7th May, we climbed back into the coach, thinking we could keep better watch from there without being seen, Miroul standing guard for us outside, to prevent the population of very destructive “rabbits” who surrounded us, and who disdained the grass pushing up between the paving stones, from satisfying their more murderous appetites.

  After a few moments, as the first glimmer of the sun was showing on the horizon, I saw a beggar in dirty rags slip along the walls, and squat down a few yards from the gate, remaining so immobile there you would have thought he was one of the stones of the abbey. This blending in didn’t seem to me to be the least bit accidental: I surmised that this caiman had arrived not from the hovels of the surrounding neighbourhood, but from Paris, and that he must be one of the spies Poulain had directed to follow Samarcas. There was, moreover, no reason for a beggar to be here, since there was no one to beg from—except us, and he showed no interest whatsoever in asking us for alms.

  Scarcely had he taken up his position, however, before another fellow appeared, dressed entirely in black, like a cleric, except that he had a dagger, a sword and a doublet that was definitely not cut in the French tradition. After an indifferent look at Poulain’s man, and another, somewhat more interested, in our direction, this fellow went and leant against the wall at a fair distance from the abbey gates and began cutting his nails with a pair of small scissors. This, I deduced, must be Walsingham’s man, but he didn’t appear to play the game with as much grace or skill as Mosca’s man, since he didn’t blend in as well with his surroundings.

  I judged from the presence of these two spies, one nearly invisible and the other less discreet, that Poulain had told us the truth, and that the stage was set for the emergence of the dramatis personae we four—the two spies, Giacomi and myself—were expecting. Giacomi, from what I could see, was clenching the hilt of his sword with his long, thin hand. At this, seeing his emotion and afraid that it might interfere with his judgement, I told him to allow me to take the lead in this action, and not to move a muscle until I’d given the word.

  Scarcely had I said this before the gate of the abbey opened (which was as much of an operation as opening the one at the Louvre) and two huge guards emerged, swords at their sides, looking more like soldiers than monks; after taking a look around, they went back inside. A minute later they reappeared, followed this time by Samarcas, who, seeing Walsingham’s man, headed directly towards him as if shot out of a crossbow, and, when he was about a yard away, unleashed a torrent of insults and drew his sword. The Englishman drew his weapon and laid into his opponent, but the clash of swords didn’t seem to press the soldiers into action: they just stood, hands on hips, and watched from a distance, quite assured of the fight’s outcome.

  “Blessed Virgin,” cried Giacomi, “are we going to stand here and let this man be assassinated? Samarcas will kill him! I can see it coming!”

  “Ah, Giacomi,” I hissed, “don’t go getting yourself killed! If you show yourself, even masked, Samarcas will recognize your sword and will sound the alarm. We’d have an entire monastery of monks on our backs in no time—and, worse, the Jesuit will know that his presence in Paris has been discovered, along with his plots against the king.”

  “Well, I’ll obey you, but, by heaven, to sit here and do nothing! Samarcas has so much skill and so little heart.”

  “But the Englishman doesn’t seem so bad either!”

  “He parries well. But now you’re going to see the famous Jesuit feint! Watch closely, you’re about to see it! I can tell by the sounds of their swords. The Englishman is valiant and skilled but he’s only got a second more to live!”

  “Miroul,” I called, “show yourself, hat down over your eyes, and give a good crack of your whip, as loud as you can!”

  Miroul quickly stepped forward, and it seemed to me that the sound of the whip troubled our swashbuckler enough to stop him from killing his opponent, missing his heart but hitting his lung. However, seeing Miroul, the soldiers at the gate unsheathed their swords and headed towards the coach. I decided it was time to show ourselves, and, with Giacomi at my side, our swords drawn, I shouted in English, to make them believe we were compatriots of the wounded man,

  “Come here, damn you! We shall kill you!”

  At this, Samarcas evidently decided that the whole affair was too public, as some passers-by were now watching the proceedings, so he called back his troops and they withdrew into the abbey, closing the gate.

  I ordered Miroul to drive the coach between the gate and the wounded man to create a shield that might be the target of their arquebuses, and ran to the wounded man, who, seeing me coming, made a weak effort to grab his knife, believing no doubt that I wanted to finish him off. But, before he did, I shouted,

  “Do not move! We’re friends. We shall take care of you!”

  He was reassured at this and allowed Giacomi and Miroul to seize him by the shoulders and feet and lift him, bloody as he was, into poor Gertrude’s coach. As I started to climb into the vehicle, the beggar dressed all in grey who’d been squatting next to the wall and hadn’t moved a muscle throughout, extended his hand from his rags and, throwing me a quick look, murmured:

  “A sol, just o
ne sol, for God’s sake!”

  His prayer was, unlike his look, quite humble, so I very conspicuously took a couple of coins from my purse, walked over to him and placed them in his hand.

  “Monsieur,” he whispered, “do not take the wounded man to his embassy and do not show yourselves there either! A number of Spanish flies are flitting about there!”

  I was struck by the poetic turn of this sentence in the mouth of a spy, not yet aware that such metaphors were in daily usage in the jargon of their work. I also found it strange that I should have such a thought in the midst of this commotion—a moment when I had to have my wits about me if we were going to survive.

  Once we’d brought the coach into my stables, unhitched the horses and placed the wounded man on a bed, I had him undressed and, examining his wound, discovered that it wasn’t as serious as the one that had sent Sauveterre to his grave—that one being the result of a gunshot and this one of a sword that hadn’t entirely passed through the lung, though it had penetrated at least two inches into the organ. But the Englishman was young, of robust complexion, strong and healthy in every part of his body, and thus very desirous of living, and not a bit impatient, as was my uncle Sauveterre, of achieving eternal happiness. Seeing this, I tried to reassure him and said in his language: “My master, Ambroise Paré, whom perhaps you’ve heard of, claims that a wound to the lung will heal as long as the patient remains in repose, and avoids speaking, coughing and any sudden movement.”

  To this, with a very obedient air, the Englishman, whose name was Mundane, blinked twice, and I could see from this exemplary docility that he was one of those patients who aid the physician rather than encouraging the sickness.

  From this I predicted that he’d be on his feet in a month if his wound did not become infected. Meanwhile, as I was getting ready to retire after having washed and bandaged the gash and given him some opium to assuage the pain, he said to me in English, in a thin and breathless voice,