Judith Merkle Riley

by The Master of All Desires

  “I find the punishment extremely reasonable,” said Parlamente. “For just as the crime was worse than death, so the punishment was worse than death.”

  “I don’t agree,” said Ennasuite. “I would far rather be shut up in my room with the bones of all my lovers for the rest of my days than die with them, since there’s no sin one can I make amends for while one is alive, but after death, there’s no making amends.”

  Marguerite of Navarre

  the heptameron, 1512

  Now what with the stir over mother fainting, and the fetching of water, and the fanning, and the shouting, it was a while until I got the book alone. A short inspection revealed that it contained ten gold florins, newly minted and not clipped, wrapped in an embroidered handkerchief and stuffed into the spine of the book, much as I had imagined. I sewed these into my petticoat as a precaution, since even a lady may occasionally have need of money of her own, just for some emergency, you understand, and not for any reckless or unsuitable female plans. And as for mother fainting, she said it was the air, and took to her bed for a long stay, where she lived on broth and coughed up blood.

  But within a few weeks, father grew bored with her illness and rode off to Orléans on our best saddle horse, with his steward on the second-best horse, ostensibly to collect the rent from the glove maker—or was it glove seller? Whatever it was, it was entirely too commercial for respectable gentlefolk to deal with and may possibly have involved foolish expenditures it would have depressed me to know about.

  And then, too, there was something melancholy and compelling about the little prayer book with the stained cover, that caused me to carry it about, and pause in my little nature rambles not to admire the wild roses by the meadow or the flash of blackbirds’ wings, but to draw it out, and wonder where it had come from, why it was stained, and what the strange house that had held it was really like inside. This new brooding brought on nightmares, and several times I awoke in a fright, not knowing what was wrong, and thinking I heard cries and the clash of steel. And then, one night, I woke, or dreamed I woke, and saw a man, really almost a boy, perhaps seventeen or eighteen and younger than I, standing by the bed and staring down at me. He was wearing an old-fashioned doublet and student’s gown, and his heavy, dark, curling hair escaped from his flat cap in an unruly mass. But it was his eyes, so deep and sorrowful, that terrified me. They made me think of death. I sat up so quickly I annoyed Isabelle, who said in her sleep, “Sibille, quit all this rolling around at night—you’ve taken the covers again.” But by then, the figure, or the dream, had vanished.

  The following day, high clouds began to pile up in the sky, and then a thunderstorm kept me from my walk, which made me even more nervous and fretful. But at last the weather cleared, and it was then that we saw Vincent the steward coming around the bend in the road, riding through the puddles alone.

  “Vincent, where is my husband?” asked mother. The smell of damp wool mingled with the muggy heat in the kitchen as the old servant hung his still damp cloak by the fire. He was covered in mud from the long walk. Mother had risen from her sickbed to supervise the skinning and cleaning of a brace of hares for the supper pot. She had a big apron, spotted with blood, over her gown. In the long silence that followed, the sound of the kettle lids rattling on the boiling pots sounded like an entire battery of snare drums. At last Vincent drew a long breath, and then spoke.

  “Madame, he has been taken by the bailli, and is being held in prison.”

  “For what, dear God?”

  “For bein’ a Lutheran and a heretic.”

  “A heretic?” I said. “That’s ridiculous! Why on earth should they think that?”

  “That glove merchant, Dumoulin, who was rentin’ the house. He was one of ’em—a Lutheran for sure, which was bound to cast suspicion on Monsieur. I told him, Madame, I told him—but you know how set he gets when it’s about money.”

  “But, surely—”

  “The neighbors saw people goin’ in at the same time almost every week, then comin’ out late. Somebody—nobody knows who—denounced Dumoulin for the crawlin’ snake he was, so the authorities waited one night and pounced on ’em all. Sure enough, it was one of those damned devil’s assemblies they call a ‘prêche.’ There they all were, orgyin’ and worshipin’ Satan, with Dumoulin leadin’ them all! Dancin’ naked, they said they was, around a chalice with human blood, in a mockery of the Lord’s supper! Heretical tracts from Geneva were stuffed into every cupboard, and I hear tell there was a whole trunkful of infant skeletons left over from their bloody sacrifices. I heard it all at the Moor’s Head tavern while I was waitin’ for Monsieur, but no, he wouldn’t listen to nothin’ and when he went for his rent, they took him in. Me, I was lucky enough just to get away when I spied the bailli.”

  “Orgies! Infant sacrifices! In my father’s house! I can hardly breathe for the shame of it,” said mother, sitting down suddenly on a stool, and beginning to cough again.

  “But why would they arrest father? They know who we are. We are good Catholics. Father was deceived,” I said.

  “That sly ol’ demon, Dumoulin, said under torture that Monsieur de La Roque knew about it when he rented them the house, so they think Monsieur is one of them.”

  “But, Vincent, you should have stayed and told them the truth,” said mother.

  “Oh, Madame, I’d have stayed a hundred times if it would have done a bit of good. But when I told the boys at the Moor’s Head, they explained to me there’s no way I’d be knowin’, since lords that are Lutherans all keep themselfs hid, with the Devil’s aid. You can’t tell it from the outside. Even a wife can’t tell a secret Lutheran. You have to pry it out from the inside. They’ll be burning the glove merchant and the lot of ’em next week. The whole city’s plannin’ to go.”

  Vincent’s eyes slid sideways in a way that aroused a certain suspicion within me. Surely, a man who had been offered such trust, such position in a family of distinction, should have remained bravely with his master to defend him against the evil slanders of a treacherous, heretical seller of gloves! But to the circumstances of Vincent’s birth I must attribute many of his flaws of character, especially a certain cowardly self-seeking and a greasy mercenary streak. He was, after all, only a bastard of father’s on a peasant woman, and not a real member of the family. But father had been excessively fond of Vincent’s mother while she lived, and this weakness had led him to place greater trust in her son than I would consider appropriate.

  “Suppose he did know the man was a heretic? Suppose he did?” whispered mother to herself. “Ah, God, then we are ruined at last. Everything we own will be forfeit. Reduced to beggary, oh, thank God my father never lived to see this day! My babies, my poor babies.”

  “Mother, everybody knows who we are in the city. I’m sure that when father explains that he goes to mass every year and would never dream of associating with heretics, they’ll let him go.”

  “I’m afraid it don’t work that way, Demoiselle Sibille,” said Vincent. “They can’t risk lettin’ one of ’em go. Besides, I been thinkin’ he might ’a known. Not because he was one of ’em, mind you. He might ’a just done it for more rent. Not knowing where it would lead, you understand…” I felt a distinctly heavy sensation in the region of my heart. Such behavior would not be unknown to your father, my Sensible Self whispered in a malign little hiss. Nonsense, replied my Higher Self, think of it this way: he could very well have been totally deceived, being the sort of person for whom the complexities of the spiritual dimension of life were an entirely closed mystery. Why yes, I thought, that was doubtless the explanation. My heart lightened, then gave a bound as my Higher, Poetic Self suddenly presented my mind with a noble image of great inspiration.

  “Mother, I have heard about these cases. I heard of a gentlewoman who took a petition to the Bishop for her son.”

  “A petition? Who can write us such a thing? How could we summon a notary in time? How could it be taken there before—? The strappado�
�surely they wouldn’t use that on a gentleman born—heresy—who knows what they do there? Oh, God, God, if only Annibal were here.” With all the commotion and bad news, my sisters and several household servants had crowded into the kitchen, their eyes wide, their faces solemn.

  “Maman,” said Françoise, tugging on mother’s skirts for attention. “Maman, Sibille is very clever.”

  “Oh, my mind’s a fog. I don’t know what to do. I must have Annibal, we have to send for him…”

  The gold pieces sewn into my petticoats seemed heavier and heavier, and I could almost feel them burning there. You can do anything, they whispered. You can hire an avocat to search out the law, and prove that father is entirely innocent of conspiring with heretics. You can travel to the city; you can see the Bishop. He won’t deny you an audience; after all, didn’t he himself baptize you, long ago when he was still only a priest? In my mind, I could see myself, dressed tragically in black, my eyes delicately tear-stained behind a silken veil, presenting him with a petition so elegantly and movingly written as to bring tears to the eyes even as it moved the reader to deep admiration of its composer. Oh, moving and profound Word, what cannot you accomplish in the hands of an inspired soul?

  “Sibille, you must write that petition and save father,” said Isabelle. “Annibal is too far away. Only you can do it.” With her words, my Higher Self swept all doubt away in a veritable torrent of exalted feeling. If I were the one who saved father, he would never again remark on the size of my feet, or the boniness of my person. Liberated from the cruel prison and the shadow of the gibbet, he would embrace my feet, generously sized as they were, weeping in gratitude. So beautiful was the very thought of it that my Sensible Self, that squalid little voice, was entirely drowned in the floods of exquisite anticipation.

  “I know just how to do it,” I said. “I’ve read about it in a book. You take your petition, and you just fling yourself on the Bishop’s feet and weep and then he grants your request.”

  “Was it a book about Bishops?” asked Laurette, whose narrow mind and insensitive nature often lead her to suspicion of those inspired by higher sentiments.

  “Not exactly, more about petitions.”

  “What kind? The heresy kind?” At that moment her little blue eyes looked especially like enameled beads of the more common, inexpensive variety.

  “No, the traitor kind, which is almost exactly the same. How the Duchess of Valentinois rescued her old father from a traitor’s death by flinging herself at the feet of King Francis.”

  “Sibille! That’s a dreadful, scandalous tale!” said mother, suddenly distracted from her grief. She looked at me suddenly with red-rimmed eyes, and put her hand on her bosom. “Where did you find such a filthy thing?”

  “Matheline had it. We girls had a significant discussion of it.”

  “In a convent?” said mother, scandalized.

  “Oh, but it’s a moral principle you see. I mean, we didn’t discuss the book directly, but we’d all read it. Matheline said it was all right, because it was important to know whether it was better to be disobedient to do the right thing, or to be obedient and see wickedness triumph. The Duchess’s father blessed her for what she had done.”

  “And so that dreadful Matheline passed her wicked book around in secret. What else did she show you? Matheline is a wolf in sheep’s clothing!”

  “But, Mother,” I said, suddenly struck by something, “how do you know so much about what’s in that book?”

  “I was young once,” answered mother, her voice icy. “And I paid. I had hoped you would do better.”

  “Who else will go to plead for father, if I don’t?”

  “I’ll send Vincent at dawn tomorrow to carry the news to Annibal. He must use his influence with the Montmorencys; he must go and plead with the Constable himself for his father.”

  “And suppose he doesn’t get there in time?”

  “Oh, Annibal, Annibal, if only you hadn’t left so soon!” Mother wrung her hands, then doubled over, in another one of her coughing spells. Blood seeped between her fingers. But she was a creature of steel. Eyes half closed, propped up sitting on father’s big chair, she gave orders to send a boy north on our second-best horse to find Annibal at Compiègne, and tell him to carry her request that his commanding officer, the Baron de Damville, and Damville’s father, the great Constable Montmorency, intervene in Father’s case, for the sake of his ancient service to the crown. “Daughters,” she said, as we carried her, half-fainting to her room, “there is nothing to do now but pray.”

  ***

  It was very nearly midnight. My brain aflame with a thousand worries, I sat in my nightgown at the very table where I had signed away my liberty and grandfather’s vineyard, writing, writing in secret while the household slept. An almost spent candle stood before me, casting its feeble glow over an ocean of crumpled sheets of paper. I set down my pen to inspect my last and best effort. How could all those noble and poetical touches look so contrived, so silly, so inadequate? Was it just the dark, the summer heat, that made the sweat drip off my face and dampen my palms? Perhaps something on a more classical model, more austere, fewer adjectives. I took up the pen and surveyed. “O harken to the distressed and pitiful cry of miserable and helpless orphans, great Christian, generous, discerning lord—” Firmly, I scratched out “orphans” and substituted “faithful and obedient daughters of the Church.” Orphans might imply that father was guilty, after all. But somehow the new addition didn’t look right either. I crumpled up the paper and took out a new sheet to start over. Somewhere, somewhere, I thought, there must be a Muse of Official Documents, dried up as a prune, dressed up in a drab robe ornamented with sealing wax. Sitting somewhere on a throne of files and folders, she is mocking me now. Oh, why was I such a boaster, so sure of the powers of my passionately flaming pen?

  In the shadows that stretched above me, the wall bristled with the antlers of dead stags. They were boasters, too, whispered my Sensible Self, and now their pride ornaments their enemy’s hall. Above the mantel, the dim light gleamed on engraved steel, the long barrel of father’s military trophy, the powder flask and ornate key that hung beneath it. Some Spaniard’s antlers, that’s what that thing was, the thought came to me. This room is a record of failed pride. Above the harquebus, lost in the dark, was the grim and disapproving portrait of my maternal grandfather, stiff in the court dress of old King Francis’s time. Somehow, I imagined that his eyes were staring at me in the dark.

  It was at that very moment that I heard the softest sound in the world in the courtyard, outside the closed shutters of the hall. It sounded like horses’ hooves, well muffled. Impossible, I thought. Our farm buildings, manor house, servants’ houses, stables, and granary form a continuous, high-walled square around the courtyard. Surrounding the house are the still waters of an old moat, planted about with poplars. Whoever enters must come by the gate or by the wicket beneath the gatekeeper’s house, where Vincent lives. And the last thing at night that Vincent does is bar the great gates and the wicket, and turn the mastiffs into the court. No one could be there. Even poor old Gargantua, the most useless creature in the world, who wants only to sleep beneath our bed, had been put out into the summer dark that night for stealing a new plucked capon from beneath the cook’s very eyes. Who could pass by Gargantua without a noisy greeting? It must be my nerves, I thought.

  Silently, I stood up and crossed to the closed shutters, to listen more closely. Then I was sure of it. Directly outside the shutters, almost next to me, I heard men’s quiet footsteps, and something being laid against the wall with a soft thump. Why hadn’t the dogs barked? I heard a whispered command. There was no doubt. Strangers were in the courtyard, and they were laying a ladder against the wall to the upstairs bedroom above the hall, where my sisters lay sleeping in the big bed we all shared.

  Now, despite my general delicacy of feeling, I have the fiery blood of heroes in my veins. I am not the daughter of a military hero who served under the lat
e King Francis at Pavia for nothing. Thieves were climbing to my upstairs bedroom! Bold and immediate action was required! With fierce joy my Poetic and Higher Self struck down the withered gray Muse of Official Documents, and my Flaming and Inspired Heart stirred as if at the sound of a military trumpet! My mind, illumined as if by brilliant lightning, went quick as a flash to father’s wheel lock, which had only the disadvantage that I had never shot it off. But after all, my brain sang boldly, I have seen it done dozens of times, and nothing could be simpler! Why, women could shoot off muskets all the time if they wanted to, were it not that it detracts from the feminine allure. But what had I to lose of feminine charm, me, deprived of these gifts by a forgetful Deity, who managed only to make the feet double sized?

  With a sudden burst of lion-like, or possibly lioness-like, courage, I took the heavy old thing down, nearly staggering under the weight, upended it, poured the powder into the open end, and smashed the wadding down with that long rod that is attached to it. Then I poured a dab more powder into the little pan on top, just the way I’d seen father do. I grabbed the winding key from its hook and crept upstairs in the dark, as silently as a viper, lugging my dangerous sting, as it were, on my back.

  The arm of the harquebus made a click, as I lowered it to brace the gun on a low chest of drawers, pointing it toward the shutters in the dark. There I lurked, like the dangerous spotted panther of the Indies hiding in a tree to spring on unwary natives.

  “You’ve taken the covers again,” muttered Laurette in her sleep, feeling for me. “Sibille? Sibille? Where are you?” she said, coming half-awake as she felt the empty spot.

  “Shush, for God’s sake!” I whispered fiercely, for I was feeling for the spot where you put the key to wind up the firing mechanism.

  “What are you doing?” she said, and I could hear her sitting up in bed.

  “This,” I said, winding up the wheel with a clatter of the mechanism. “Stay where you are.”