League of Spies

by Robert Merle

  She made only two mistakes: the first (which the guard had justly observed) was that, unlike Judith sacrificing Holofernes, she didn’t begin by cutting his throat, so that Mundane was able to cry out loudly enough for me to sound the alarm; the second was that, never having laid her hands on the trunk, she believed she could lift it, as Mundane had done, to steal the letter he’d slipped underneath. And in this her whole plan failed, for she killed Mundane for nothing, and, finding herself in great peril of the gibbet or of being drawn and quartered, she managed to get herself out of her predicament by pulling more wool over my eyes than is found at a sheep-shearing in May, and then, to seal the bargain, by stealing my horse, which was the only steed in the stable that could have caught her had she chosen any other.

  It’s not impossible that she was the chief of the little band who’d been on our tails ever since we left Lyons, but she must have decided that, given our number and arms, the chances of beating us in combat were not good, and so decided to use a ruse where strength wouldn’t have succeeded. As for me, other than the loss of my Andalusian mare (who had cost me 500 écus, being very robust and fleet of foot), I now realized that I was blacklisted by some powerful enemies of the king, this Marianne clearly being a Guisard, as zealous as she was bloodthirsty in her execution of the designs of her master.

  With fury in my heart, I purchased another horse, and this time taking the longer route to Paris along a series of smaller roads, we arrived in the capital without further difficulties, and I hurried to deliver Navarre’s letter to Lady Stafford, whom I found in the salon of Madame de Joyeuse. She offered me copious thanks, but expressed much less grief at the news of Mundane’s death than I would have wished. But I’ve noticed that the English are much more attentive than we are to differences of birth, rank and degree, having, as they do, two words for the nobility: the gentry, who are the lower, and the nobility, who are the higher. As Mundane belonged to the first category and Lady Stafford to the second, she doubtless thought herself too highly placed to weep over his death, and contented herself with a very reserved encomium for the deceased, saying that, without doubt, he was a gentleman entirely devoted to his queen, but nevertheless too “rash”. No doubt this last term was meant to communicate her displeasure that any English gentleman would be capable of consorting with a chambermaid in a hotel—especially a French one!

  I was a little disappointed that neither the Duc de Joyeuse nor the Comte du Bouchage visited the maréchale that day, but gathered from what I overheard in my hostess’s salon that they were being very hard on the heretics, and that this judgement smelt too distinctly of Guise for gentlemen who owed the great fortunes of their houses to the king. The Marquis de Miroudot, who was very sharp and guessed my astonishment despite my efforts to hide it, took me by the arm and said, sotto voce:

  “How unjust people are to me to call me ungrateful! It’s the wind that’s changing, not me!”

  Miroudot belonged to the type of people whom the Guisards had come to hate almost as much as the Huguenots, calling them “politicals”—a term that designated Catholics who did not want to break with the reformers, whether because of secret connections to them, because they were suspicious of the zeal of the Pope, the clergy and the Spanish king and didn’t want to appear sympathetic to the tyranny of the Inquisition, or because they were faithful to the king and could clearly see that the civil war that Guise sought to launch would profit only himself, and that religion was only the mantle with which he covered his ambition.

  These “despicable” politicals were, truth be told, very good and honest folk, like Miroudot, like L’Étoile, like Roquelaure, but they had so many subtle nuances in their opinions and such prudence and zeal in their hearts that they were unable to join together to resist the Guisards’ oppression, and struggled against them only through their numbers and their inertia.

  As soon as I’d learnt that the king had returned from Lyons with Épernon, I went to visit him and met a crowd of courtiers in his antechambers, who were besieging him with requests for favours and handouts of various kinds, since they hadn’t had access to him for two months. Most of these were royalists, but some were Guisards who ate at two troughs and were devouring the riches of this kingdom with their eyes already fixed on the next regime, or at least hoping for a change.

  “Well, mi fili!” Fogacer greeted me as he emerged from the crowd and gave me a welcoming embrace with his spidery arms, his eyes ablaze under those diabolical eyebrows of his. “So you’re back from your mission, smelling like sulphur and embers, just like the days when you were chasing diabolical petticoats around cemeteries! But this is much worse,” he whispered in my ear. “All they can talk about in there are the infernal spells and other evils you use to serve the tortuous designs of the king.”

  “Well, as for my magic,” I laughed, having no idea about what he might have heard about my own setbacks, “I was able to prescribe a boiled saline solution for him to gargle for his sore throat.”

  “But tongues are wagging, mi fili,” whispered Fogacer.

  “And what are they saying?”

  “That you were the member of Épernon’s retinue whom the king charged with offering Navarre 200,000 écus if he’d declare war on the Catholics of this kingdom.”

  “But Navarre never spoke to me, or even saw me!”

  “That’s precisely why you’re suspected, since there was no way Henri could have forgotten you after your meeting on St Bartholomew’s eve. So it’s bruited that you worked this deal through your father, the Baron de Mespech.”

  “That’s a pure and simple fabrication!”

  “Mi fili,” he said, arching his black eyebrows, “a fabrication is never pure and rarely simple.”

  With a laugh he turned away to join the venerable Dr Miron, who was looking for him. Of course, I was much alarmed at the rumours that were circulating about me in Paris and that clearly called for my assassination, since, in these troubled times, there was no lie too enormous for the uninformed populace to swallow it. I wanted to hear Quéribus’s thoughts on this, and went looking for him among the press of people, finally spying him in conversation with a Guisard sympathizer, who, the minute he caught sight of me approaching, quickly took his leave of the baron, casting a terrified look over his shoulder and fleeing as though he’d just seen the Devil himself.

  “’Sblood!” exclaimed Quéribus, nearly suffocating me in his embrace. “You’ve become a decidedly unsavoury character in Paris! Those 200,000 écus are a distinct stain on your reputation!”

  “But who would believe such an absurd story?”

  “No one at court, except perhaps for the idiot I was just talking to, who fled in terror at the sight of you. Few people at court are ignorant of the fact that if the king gave Épernon 200,000 écus when he left, it was to cover the expenses of his mission. But you can be assured that the zealots of Paris will believe the other version as if it were gospel.”

  “But who invents these lies?”

  “What! You mean you don’t know? It’s the Madame Limp herself, the Duchesse de Montpensier! She has a natural talent for inventing stories that are designed to harm the king and serve her brother. She then sends her inventions, accompanied by significant monetary contributions, to all the Guisard prelates in the capital, who immediately sprinkle their sermons with them on Sundays as if they were the word of God.”

  “But who’d ever believe the king would give such a sum to Navarre to attack his own army?”

  “The Parisians, my friend! There’s no nonsense that can’t be fed to Parisians if you repeat it often enough. And here’s another: that the king spent 400,000 écus in Lyons purchasing miniature greyhounds.”

  “What are they?”

  “Tiny dogs that the ladies like to put on their laps. Notice the immensity of the sum! At 500 écus per puppy, the king would have purchased 800 of ’em! Heavens! What would he have done with them all?”

  “So that’s what’s being repeated in the pulpits?”r />
  “No, it’s reported in the sacristy, whispered in the confessional, alluded to in the sermons and trumpeted in the processional! The seminarians teach it as gospel to their aspiring priests! And the professors at the Sorbonne gloss it for their students! You know, Pierre, there are nearly 500 streets in Paris and there’s no street so small that it doesn’t house at least ten men of the cloth, whether monks or priests, so you can imagine what an immense net is thrown over the people of our city by Guise’s 5,000 zealots!”

  “So, it’s Quéribus the Quarreller!” snorted Chicot, pushing his way between Quéribus and me, his long nose perennially dripping. “And you, Bloodletter! I couldn’t help overhearing!”—for indeed he had excellent hearing. “You’re plotting against the Magnificent! You know that’s a capital crime in this kingdom! Don’t you go to church? Aren’t you familiar with the Gospel according to Madame Limp? The Book of the Great Whoremonger? The Epistle of the Pig? The Psalms of the Magnificent, who never tires of singing his own praises?* You will note that these four evangelists are all from the house of Lorraine—four paragons of all the virtues known and unknown. The four columns and caryatids of our Holy Mother the Church!”

  “Chicot, you’re becoming bitter,” growled Quéribus, who, though he was an anti-Guisard, didn’t like to hear princes maligned, even if they were from Lorraine and therefore foreigners.

  “It’s Paris that’s growing bitter,” replied Chicot. “Paris suffers from two great evils: 100,000 horses and 5,000 priests. The first shit piles of manure, the others piles of Guisardist sermons.”

  Our laughter attracted the attention of other courtiers, who loved hearing Chicot’s bons mots, which would then be bandied about from one end of the Louvre to the other. Chicot took each of us by the arm, the drip from his nose falling happily on his own doublet, and dragged us over to a table laden with food, where, after observing that none of us had yet breakfasted, we three set to—but our repast was to be short-lived.

  “Bloodletter,” said Chicot in my ear in a suddenly serious tone, “the king is very unhappy that Épernon failed in his mission, since, if Navarre had been converted, Henri could have counted on him to fortify his throne. He’s also worried about your safety, having got wind of the business in Mâcon.”

  “What! Already?”

  “Henri has his spies,” said Chicot. “Did you think you were the only one? Moreover, he wants to see you as soon as he’s finished spilling his guts to Father Auger.”

  “Chicot,” I answered, “you whose madness is so full of wisdom—”

  “Nicely begun!” interrupted the fool.

  “Given that the Jesuits are occupied in London, Treves, Reims and Rome with such ‘worthy’ endeavours, explain to me why he has chosen one of them to be his confessor.”

  “There’s an answer to that,” replied Chicot, “which is that Auger is, first and foremost, a royalist, and always has been.”

  “There’s another answer to that,” added Quéribus, “which is that the Jesuits never put all their eggs in one basket.”

  “True enough,” agreed Chicot, “but in this case they’ve got nine eggs in Guise’s basket and but one in Henri’s.”

  “Excuse me!” said a tall, well-built courtier as he elbowed his way to our table. “I’m sorry to dislodge you, but I need a bite to eat!” I recognized this intruder as Alphonse d’Ornano.

  “Corsican,” smiled Chicot, “the table is yours, given that you’re the best Corsican alive and so devoted to your king!”

  “That’s true enough!” cried d’Ornano, seating himself with alacrity. “I’d give my life for the king.”

  “But not your stomach,” laughed Chicot.

  At this moment, the door to the king’s chambers opened, and Du Halde trumpeted at the top of his voice, “Monsieur de Siorac, the king’s physician!”

  With Chicot at my heels, I pushed my way through the press of gentlemen, trying to look as meek as possible, but inwardly delighted to take precedence over all these peacocks. Surprisingly, however, Du Halde stopped the fool as he tried to cross the threshold. “I said ‘the king’s physician’,” growled Du Halde, stiff as a German reiter.

  “And so I am!” Chicot replied. “I heal his soul!”

  “Let him pass, Du Halde!” cried the king from within.

  “Du Halde,” hissed Chicot, “from now on, it’s going to be ‘Du Halt’!”

  The king was standing with his left hand on the mantel of the fireplace, dressed in a pale-green doublet with yellow slashes embroidered in gold and covered with innumerable rows of pearls and gems. Under his beautiful white ruff he wore a double necklace of gold-studded amber that, as I noticed when I got closer, gave off a sweet odour. On his right hand he wore two rings, and on his left three. On each ear hung at least two pendants, one of diamonds, the other of pearls. Under the little bonnet topped, in the latest style, by two sprays of diamonds, his hair was arranged in fluffy rings.

  Henri, who could sometimes be open and amusing with his intimates, as he had been the last time I’d seen him, was in a much more sombre mood on this morning, which meant that I shouldn’t expect him to laugh, smile or even extend his hand for my reverential kiss. He appeared to be as immobile as the marble behind him and stiff as a statue, and fixed me with those deep, black, Italian eyes, without blinking.

  He was decorated like an idol, with as many gems, pearls and jewels as Queen Elizabeth, whom I’d seen in London in 1586 when I was accompanying Pomponne de Bellièvre on a state visit. He was tall and elegant in stature, despite the increasing portliness that was threatening him, but his handsome face was now overshadowed by worry and melancholy. He was not without an air of real wisdom, as though he’d worked at creating an image of a monarch who was able to impose his authority by his virtue alone. When he opened his mouth to speak, his flowery speech added a sovereign grace to his thoughts, which were always the finest, most considered and most equitable of any of the voices around him. His generosity was legendary, for he showered all those who served him with innumerable gifts, a largesse which derived not only from his natural complexion, but from his belief that he was a “father to his subjects”, although he had no children of his own—a liberal and forgiving attitude that prevailed for as long as his subjects were faithful to him.

  If he had a fault (which I’m reluctant to name, so great was my love for him), it was that this image that he’d so carefully cultivated—his splendid appearance, the studied etiquette of his entourage, the crafted eloquence of his public speeches, his marvellous intelligence about affairs of state, which was demonstrated on so many occasions, and his boundless generosity with his officers and servants… in short, it was that this beautiful, noble and wise image was just that: merely an image, almost as inflexible as his beautiful hand resting on the mantel—you might have said it was marble on marble.

  For the entire time that I served him, that is, right up until his death, Henri seemed to me to suffer from a deep reluctance to act, to move or to strike when necessary, as indeed these times demanded of him. It’s not that he was weak-willed, or that his soul was irresolute. But since he read Machiavelli every day, he’d convinced himself that it was better to feign blindness, to dissimulate and to temporize with a smile and without batting an eye—tactics that followed altogether too closely his own inclination to suffer stoically the many intrusions, injuries, dispossessions and even humiliations that were showered on him. And although these humiliations irritated him at times, he never abandoned in his heart of hearts the firm intention of someday turning them to his advantage. But his very patience gave his emboldened enemies, and sometimes even his own people, the impression that he was soft and cowardly—though he was neither, as events would eventually prove.

  This infinitely logical prince had the folly of believing in reason in a century that was dominated by zealotry. He wanted to use argument, rather than beheadings, to sway those who conspired to ruin him. Heads did eventually roll, but it was as a last resort, and in the
despair of not knowing what else to do, or how to do it.

  I well remember, on the subject of the preachers and doctors of the Sorbonne who were insulting and bombarding him with calumnies, that, a mere three years after the meeting that I’ve been describing here, the king, being furious with their lies, called them together with his parliament at the Louvre, where he delivered a bitter and forceful reprimand that lasted a full two hours, lambasting their insolent and unbridled licence in preaching against him.

  The knaves trembled with fear as they listened, the most fearful of all being Boucher, the priest of Saint-Prévost, whom His Majesty called “wicked and impudent” for having included calumnies and obvious lies in a sermon against him—which even included the assertion that he’d had an Orléans theologian named Burlat drowned in a sack in the river, whereas this same Burlat was not only still living, but daily consorting with other priests in the taverns in that town.

  “Boucher!” cried the king. “And all the rest of you priests and doctors of the same cloth, you can’t deny that you’re doubly damned!

  “First, for having publicly conspired against your legitimate king, and propagated calumnies and lies, which are forbidden by the Holy Bible.

  “Second, for having administered the Blessed Sacrament after having spoken such lies and calumnies without having either reconciled yourselves with me or confessed your sins, despite telling your congregants that such reconciliation and confession are necessary before presenting oneself before God!

  “And as for you, Messieurs masters of arts at the Sorbonne, I’ve heard on good authority that on the sixteenth of this month, after a good dinner, you secretly passed a resolution authorizing my subjects to remove from power any prince who should be found wanting in any way. I’ve been told to take no notice of this resolution since it was taken after a meal. And yet, Messieurs of the Sorbonne, and you, Messieurs preachers, I’d like to remind you that the reigning Pope, Sixtus V, recently sent to the galleys a good dozen Cordeliers for having spoken irreverently of him in their sermons. And, finally, I’d like to remind you that there is not one of you—I say, not one!—who is more worthy than one of those Cordeliers. However, I’m willing to forget and pardon everything as long as you agree not to return to such calumnies and lies, else I will instruct my parliament to wreak immediate and exemplary justice on you.”