League of Spies

by Robert Merle

  Du Halde consented, and we did as I suggested, but the hour did not fly by—quite the contrary, it crept along like a slug on a lettuce leaf, so occupied were we at keeping the fire burning brightly so that the king would be warm when he got dressed. When at last we managed to breathe life into the fire, the sudden light illuminated the long, austere visage of Du Halde and his two bony hands extended towards the flames—this man who had served the king ever since he’d been the Duc d’Anjou, following him to Poland and fleeing that country with him; he had shared in Henri’s shadow many good and bad days, leaving Paris and the Louvre with him after the barricades, and, had it been necessary, would have followed Henri to hell without a second thought. My great, immutable friendship with Du Halde really dates from that night, when, sitting in front of the fire on our stools, we listened quietly to the ticking of the watch, the crackling of the fire and the gusts of rain against the windowpanes. Du Halde was Seigneur and Baron d’Avrilly, and governor of Étaples, and could have aspired to higher office than this if he’d consented to abandon his humble and daily functions for the king. His only title was “ordinary manservant” and he hadn’t been paid a single sol since the day of the barricades.

  At four o’clock, the faithful timepiece tintinnabulated, and Du Halde stood up as if a crossbow had shot him off his stool. A look at the floor plan will confirm that the door of the wardrobe leading into the passage that led to the new oratory was opposite the door that opened into the queen’s chambers. Which is why Du Halde, who had no candle, left the door of the wardrobe open to allow the firelight to guide his way. I got up when he did, but was careful not to block his light as he knocked on the queen’s door.

  I heard a woman’s voice asking:

  “What is it? Who is it? Aren’t you ashamed to disturb the king’s sleep?”

  “It is I, Du Halde. Tell the king that it is four o’clock!”

  “I will not!” said the voice bitterly. “I won’t do it! The king is asleep! And the queen as well!”

  “By God,” cried Du Halde in anger, “wake up the king this minute! Or I’ll start yelling so loud and for so long that they’ll both wake up!”

  And I saw him raise his fist as if he were going to knock again furiously, but he was dissuaded by the voice of the king from within.

  “What is it, Piolant?”

  “Sire,” replied Piolant (who was, I imagine, the queen’s chambermaid, and who, like Du Halde, slept on a bed that she unrolled on the ground), “it’s Du Halde, who says it’s four o’clock!”

  “Piolant!” came the king’s voice. “My boots, my robe, my candle!”

  Hearing this, Du Halde returned to the wardrobe, still trembling with anger, and said, between clenched teeth: “That ninny Piolant!” and then tossed an entire log onto the fire, sending sparks showering onto the floor just as the king entered. He seemed very pleased to see such a display and exclaimed:

  “Thank you, Du Halde, for such a beautiful fire!”

  But I noticed that he didn’t present his hand either to Du Halde or to me (whom he didn’t even seem to notice), and I attributed this oversight to the thoughts that must be agitating him. In this I turned out to be wrong, for—after Du Halde had removed the king’s robe (which was thickly lined with ermine), administered a rough rub-down over his entire body with spirits of wine, dressed him from head to toe in black velvet, combed his hair, placed his cap on his head and hung around his neck the Order of the Holy Spirit—the king, turning round to look at himself in the mirror, said:

  “Du Halde, am I presentable?”

  “Indeed, sire!” confirmed Du Halde after inspecting his monarch meticulously.

  And it was only then that the king presented his hand to us, first to Du Halde and then to me, since, as we were both barons, Du Halde had precedence over me: he was the king’s manservant and I only his physician. In this capacity, I wanted to take the king’s pulse, but he said that he felt fine, and that he’d feel even better if the affair didn’t fail.

  Just then we heard a noise that seemed to be coming from the courtyard of the chateau, and since the windows in the king’s apartment looked out over the countryside, the king sent me to the old cabinet, which overlooked the courtyard, and I could see by the light of their torches that the noise came from the king’s carriage and the service horses, which the coachmen had tied up to the right of the grand stairway: a deception that His Majesty had staged in order to make it look as though his departure to la Noue were imminent. Retracing my steps, I bumped into Bellegarde in the old oratory, who was returning from the Gallery of the Stags, where he said the king had sent him to ascertain that the Forty-five were assembled there.

  Returning together to the room, we found it full of the advisors and officers whom His Majesty had convoked for five o’clock, namely, the Maréchal d’Aumont, Rambouillet, François d’O, secretary of state Revol and d’Entragues. With the exception of these last two, whom the king kept at his side, he sent the others into the council room, a valet lighting their way with a candelabrum.

  Laugnac finally appeared at the door of the old oratory, and the king, now showing signs of impatience, asked him rather abruptly if all of the Forty-five were now assembled in the Gallery of the Stags.

  “Yes, sire,” confirmed Laugnac, “all but two or three.”

  “Good enough,” approved the king. “Have them tiptoe upstairs to the room next to my old oratory. I shall meet them there. And tell them on their life to keep quiet. The least noise might alert the queen mother, and that would spoil everything. Du Halde,” he continued, “I’m hungry. Is there nothing to eat here?”

  “Sire, all we have are some plums from Brignoles. Shall I bring you some?”

  “Thank you, yes,” confirmed the king, who only nibbled two or three of them, proof that he wasn’t so much hungry as worried at being potentially weakened by his fast, having risen so early.

  Laugnac having returned to report that the Forty-five were now at their posts, the king asked me to take him to them and to point out to him La Bastide and Montseris, no doubt remembering that I’d told him that my two companions were highly inflamed against Guise, since he wanted to steal their livelihood by sending them home to look for work in Gascony. Having traversed the old oratory, he stopped on the threshold of the room in which the Gascons were crowded, standing silently at attention. I whispered to the king the descriptions of my two companions and he nodded that he’d understood me.

  “Messieurs,” he said softly, “some very evil people have made plots and threats against my person and my life. I am going to need to depend on your strong arms and your courage. I am going to ask you to raise those same arms without saying a word, if you agree to do as I command this day no matter what I order you to do.”

  All the arms in the room were raised as one, and in the most absolute silence. The king nodded in particular to Bastide and Montseris and then withdrew, leaving me alone with Bellegarde, who stepped next door into the old cabinet and returned a moment later, his arms full of daggers, which he’d doubtless removed from the secret drawer in that room.

  “There are eight of these,” explained Bellegarde. “Don’t say a word. Raise your hand if you want one.”

  Many, but not all, of them reached for the weapons, among them La Bastide and Montseris in the front row.

  Bellegarde brought the eight Gascons that he’d just armed into the king’s chamber, and told them to hide their weapons behind their backs in the Italian manner so that they would be concealed under their capes. One among them asked quietly why they’d need knives when they were wearing swords at their sides. Bellegarde explained in the same quiet voice that it was a matter of an execution of a traitor to the king condemned by His Majesty and not a duel, and that the king did want any Gascon blood to be shed on this occasion.

  At this moment, the king, who’d been in his new cabinet with Revol and d’Entragues, entered the room; he stepped up to the eight, stood quietly in front of them and looked each of t
hem in turn in the eye as if he wanted to remember them. Then he said, sotto voce:

  “My friends, I thank you for your zealous devotion to my service. The traitor is the Duc de Guise, and he must die.”

  One of them, whose name, I learnt later, was Sarriac, then said in Provençal:

  “Cap de Diou, sire, iou lou bou rendraï mort!”†

  It was now about half-past six, and Du Halde came to tell the king that his chaplain and his almoner were asking Monsieur de Nambu if they could pass through his room into the new oratory, where His Majesty had asked them to say Mass. The king then had his eight Gascons return to the old oratory, no doubt so that the priests wouldn’t see them, and received the latter with his customary civility, telling them to prepare to say Mass, which he regretted he wouldn’t be able to hear, in which case they should sing it without him.

  The priests had scarcely left the new oratory when Larchant arrived to announce that his men were now assembled at the bottom of the great staircase.

  “Ah, Larchant!” said the king. “Place five of your men and an officer on the first floor in front of the queen mother’s door, and if Guise attempts to see her, have him told that she has just taken her medicine and refuses to see anyone. Moreover, your guards must prevent anyone from entering the queen mother’s room—and anyone from leaving it, including any chambermaids. And assign three guards to Nambu to be placed on the spiral staircase between my rooms and my mother’s.”

  Once Larchant had departed, the king sent Bellegarde to choose twelve from among the Forty-five to place in the old cabinet, so that if Guise succeeded in escaping from the eight Gascons posted in the king’s chamber he’d find them there with their swords drawn.

  Having thus finished his orders, and having now to await the outcome of his enterprise, the king became suddenly very animated, and, though he usually liked to wait, whether sitting or standing, as immobile as a statue, he suddenly began pacing up and down in his room, his eyes fixed on the floor and his hands behind his back. In truth, I’d already seen him agitated before, but never this feverishly—now consulting the watch that Du Halde wore around his neck, now looking out of the windows and complaining about the torrential rain, now complaining that the sun wasn’t coming up and that it was “the darkest, most shadowy day he’d ever seen”.

  As for me, I was surprised that he’d required my presence—I couldn’t imagine to what use His Majesty would employ me or why he’d insisted that I sleep in his wardrobe with Du Halde and not leave him. And even when he called me over and asked me to deliver a message, its contents were not so sensitive that it required a messenger of my status. Quite the opposite. And so I felt that it was ironic that I, who was not a Catholic other than by lip service, had to cross the new cabinet into the new oratory on behalf of the king, to carry a message to his chaplain and his almoner.

  The chaplain was named Étienne Dorguyn and the almoner Claude de Bulles, but for the life of me I can’t remember which was which, since they both had rounded shoulders and round paunches and round red, faces with scatterings of white hair on their pates.

  “Messieurs,” I announced, after greeting them with all due respect, “His Majesty requests that you not wait any longer for him but begin your devotions immediately and pray to God that the king succeed in the enterprise that he has undertaken in order to bring peace to his kingdom.”

  At this speech, the two priests looked somewhat astonished, and asked what the enterprise was that required their prayers, as it were, blindly. But since the king’s message did not specify this, one of them, the almoner I believe, who’d already put on the alb and stole to celebrate Mass, said:

  “Monsieur, please assure His Majesty that we obey his order and that we will both pray for the success of his enterprise.”

  After having bowed to them, I left them, but not without some uneasiness, Huguenot that I am, at the strange things that men—priests and the faithful alike—ask of the God that they adore, and whom they pretend to obey. For I fear that the Mass that day in the new oratory was neither requested nor said in good conscience, but was, both for the king and for his chaplain and almoner, reduced to the level of pure superstition.

  When I returned to the king’s chamber, I heard Henri order his butler, Monsieur de Merle, to hurry to the Cardinal de Guise’s chambers to remind him that the king was expecting him to attend the meeting of the council, as he’d indicated the previous evening in his letter. And catching sight of me at that moment, the king asked me to post myself at the window of the old cabinet, which overlooked the courtyard of the chateau, and to tell him when the duc appeared, who would be crossing the courtyard to enter the Louis XII wing and mount the great staircase of honour.

  I found the twelve Forty-five waiting in the old cabinet, mute as carps, but not at all peaceful since they were constantly adjusting the handles of their swords as if they were itching in their scabbards, and even though the king (despite the fact that he’d done so to the eight in his room) had not yet told them the name of the traitor whom, if necessary, they would have to prevent from escaping, I could see from their determined expressions that they had no doubt as to his identity and little love for him, since he sought to break up their band and send them back to their poverty in Guyenne.

  As I glued my forehead to the window, I watched the day dawn pallidly, the oblique sheets of the driving rain and morning mist so obscuring my view that I couldn’t have distinguished a grey cat from a white one. There had been some movement in the courtyard as various dignitaries arrived for the council meeting, but I had to wait for what seemed a very long time before I caught sight of the duc, who was accompanied only by his secretary, Péricard, a valet carrying his ombrello and another who preceded him with a lantern. I immediately recognized the duc by his height (which exceeded that of any other lord at the court) and also by his doublet and light-grey coat—Guise, aspiring to the status of archangel, preferred light colours.

  I could see him very well, since the valet carrying the lantern was walking backwards despite the risk of falling on the wet pavement, in order to light his master’s way. As the great staircase projected several feet into the courtyard, I could also see Larchant’s guards waiting to present their respectful demand for back pay, but whose orders were to occupy the staircase as soon as the duc had passed, closing the trap behind him, all the other staircases also being guarded by the Forty-five. The duc, who had but a few yards to traverse to arrive at his death, seemed to me already to be walking with great fatigue, assuredly tired by having spent the night in the bed of Madame de Sauves. As for me, at that moment, as great a traitor as he was, paid by Spain and working for the ruin of the state, I was seized as I saw him approach the first step of the great staircase with a feeling of compassion, sensing that he was ready to fall from the arms of a woman into the hands of God, sallying from a night of voluptuous pleasure into eternal night.

  He entered. I ran to announce his arrival to the king, whose eyes suddenly lit up and who said, turning to Bellegarde:

  “Bellegarde, order the porters to close the gates of the chateau as soon as the Cardinal de Guise and the archbishop of Lyons have entered, and tell Nambu that no one other than the Duc de Guise is to cross the threshold of my chambers.”

  And then, turning to the eight, he said:

  “Sit down on the trunks here and remain calm. But stand up as soon as the duc enters and follow him respectfully to the door of the old cabinet. Be very careful to avoid being hurt by this man. He’s tall and powerful and I’d be very sad if any of you were wounded.”

  As the duc passed through the door that was so well defended by Monsieur de Nambu and entered the council room, a shudder seemed to run through all those present, as I learnt from François d’O and d’Aumont, who recounted the scene to me later.

  At the instant the duc entered, his head held high, greeted by a deep bow from everyone in the room, magnificent in his light-grey satin, his long coat thrown over his left arm, and his great p
lumed hat in his right hand, there was no evidence of any council in progress. The counsellors were standing scattered about the hall, or walking in small groups from one fireplace to the other, which were heating the room only feebly since the valet of the wardrobe had neglected to stoke them after the entrance of the Maréchal d’Aumont.

  Finally, the archbishop and the Cardinal de Guise arrived, and if Heaven had granted them a miraculous increase in their hearing, they might have heard the gates, doors and drawbridge of the chateau closing behind them. But the council did not yet begin, since they were waiting for the arrival of secretary of state Martin Ruzé to bring the day’s agenda.

  The old Maréchal d’Aumont, who’d been my friend ever since he’d heard from my mouth how I’d managed to steal, from Madame Limp, the damning letter from Guise to Felipe II, told me later that the counsellors in the large hall had grouped themselves by affinity: on one side the Leaguers—the Duc de Guise, the Cardinal de Guise and the archbishop of Lyons; on another the less zealous royalists—the Cardinal de Gondi, who was the archbishop of Paris, the Maréchal de Retz, the secretaries of state Marcel and Pétromol, and the idiot Montholon; and lastly the ardent royalists, the very ones the king had enlisted in the secret plot—himself, Rambouillet and François d’O. Each group, François d’O told me later, was looking furtively at and spying on the others, trying to hear what they were saying. But since they all feared being overheard, they limited their conversations to the most banal subjects, as demonstrated by following from the Cardinal de Guise to the duc:

  “Where’s the king going in such bad weather?”

  “I hear,” replied the duc, “he’s going to attend a retreat at la Noue for a few days, as usual.”

  “My dear d’O,” I said looking at his lively and intelligent face as he recounted this scene much later, “what do you think Guise was thinking at that moment?”