by Robert Merle
My eminent professors of medicine at Montpellier made much mockery of this, when I later recounted these events, arguing that water, even hot water, could have no effect on airborne contagion since water and air are, by their very essences, incompatible. This was doubtless infallibly reasoned. And yet no one at Mespech contracted the plague, not Toinette, or Escorgol, or my father. Perhaps there was some good after all in all these “odd ways”.
Diane was suffering from a raging fever and was very thin and weak as her nurse at Fontenac had believed that a strict diet would be good for her. My father, noticing that she urinated infrequently and little, ordered milk to be given her whenever she asked for it, and she drank up to two litres a day, spending all day shivering and devoured by a prodigious thirst. On the sixth day, my father noticed that a large bubo in her armpit was beginning to drain. He wrote to Fontenac that his daughter was improving, since the sickness seemed to be leaving her body, and that if the draining continued, a complete recovery could be expected.
Two days after this letter, Mespech received a visit from a great doctor in Sarlat, Anthoine de Lascaux, who, claiming he was sent by the Baron de Fontenac, demanded to see the patient. And truly he “saw” her and nothing more, for he never crossed the threshold of her room. From this vantage point he pronounced that she looked well enough, but that, to hasten her recovery, two pints of blood must be drawn from her body every day.
“Bleed her!” exclaimed my father. “But why?”
Anthoine de Lascaux, who was a very handsome man, quite portly and enormously sure of himself, smiled at the naivety of this medical neophyte and hastened to enlighten him on the most recent advances in medical science. “I see that frequent bleeding, as a cure, hasn’t reached these backwaters yet, My Lord. It is, however, the sovereign cure for all ills, and the remedy of preference ever since Leonardo Botallo, Charles IX’s famous Italian physician, introduced it to the French court.”
“And what does this bleeding accomplish?”
“It releases the corrupted blood from the body of the patient. You are surely not unaware that the more bad water is skimmed out of a well the more good water will fill it. The same is true of blood and bleeding.”
“Metaphor is not logic,” replied my father after a moment of thought. “The well water is renewed by the spring that feeds it. But we do not know how blood is replenished.”
“Blood engenders blood,” said Lascaux with gravity.
“Perhaps, but not as fast. I witnessed during my military campaigns thousands of wounded who were greatly weakened by loss of blood, even though the wound was clean. And even when the wound was healed and closed, these same men remained greatly enfeebled for weeks afterwards.”
Lascaux raised a magisterial hand: “Precisely because of the corrupted part of their blood. Their recovery would have been greatly hastened by drawing it out of their bodies.”
My father reflected for a moment and answered: “If you believe that there is some ‘corrupted’ part, as you say, then you must also believe that there is some healthy part. Yet how do you know, when you are bleeding a person, that it is the corrupted part you are drawing out and not the healthy part?”
This seemed to embarrass Lascaux. But since he was sharp-witted enough, despite his bombast, he decided to turn the matter into a great joke: “Ah, My Lord, the authority of the greatest doctors in the kingdom is apparently nothing in your eyes! You’re a great sceptic! You don’t believe in bleeding any more than you do in the Virgin Mary, so you’re a heretic in medicine as well as in religion…”
My father agreed to laugh at this flash of wit, and invited Lascaux to dinner and treated him hospitably. And Lascaux, on his return to Sarlat, wrote to Fontenac that the Baron de Mespech seemed well intentioned enough, but had a very odd conception of things. All in all, however, Lascaux confessed, the patient, whom he had been able to observe closely, gave every indication of an early cure. I found this letter from Lascaux among the archives of the Château de Fontenac, along with a note on the reverse side, from the baron, that he had sent fifty écus to the great doctor from Sarlat as a fee for his consultation.
As for other “consultations”, there were none, for Jean de Siorac sent a firm but courteous letter to Fontenac reminding him of their agreement. Thus entrusted solely to the care of my father, Diane continued her long convalescence at Mespech, occasionally appearing at the windows of the gatehouse while we worked away below putting the finishing touches on the new bulwarks.
That September was sunny and so mild that occasionally, wrapped in a white fur cape, Diane would open the window and sit on the stone sill for hours watching our work with her large green eyes, the shadow of a smile playing at the corners of her still pale lips. I noticed that these appearances had a great effect on my eldest brother, to the point of riveting him to the spot, his eyes fixed and his hands hanging empty, not moving so much as an inch for minutes at a time. Who would have thought that this big dolt had so much blood in his veins, such a lively imagination and a heart capable of such tenderness? Diane certainly looked at all of us, and at no one in particular, but out of the corner of her green eye she couldn’t have helped noticing François’s confusion. And as he lowered his eyes and returned to his work, she would throw him, quick as a wink, a look, just one, and so rapid and quickly withdrawn that François was at great pains to see any encouragement in it. Such is the way of young women, it is said, when they are well bred.
But little Hélix, during our nights, displayed a more rustic style. “You’re wicked, Pierre,” she scolded as soon as the lamp was blown out, Barberine herself extinguished as well, deep in sleep. “You’re always looking at that fancy floozy from the chateau. Your elder brother is already smitten and trapped, the poor fool! And does this tall skinny thing appeal to you too?”
“She’s got a very pretty face,” I said, to tease her.
“That’s enough!” she retorted vehemently. “She’s as pale as a turnip and her breasts are as small as my hands.” So saying she jumped on me and, leaning forward, pushed her breasts in my eyes, “to stop them up”, as she said.
Gossip was not lacking among our servants, especially in the kitchen and scullery where tongues wagged feverishly between la Maligou and Barberine. But in the library, between brother and brother, there was not a word, nor trace of a reference in the Book of Reason, nor the least allusion to François, who, taking his cue from this silence, looked the very image of despair.
On 1st October, the Brethren received an emissary sent by Monsieur de Duras, who was gathering the Huguenot troops from the south at Gourdon to lead them to Orleans to reinforce the Prince de Condé’s army. This meeting took place in the Mespech library, and François, Samson and I were again present, since Jean de Siorac believed that it wasn’t enough to have his rascals learn ancient history from Sauveterre: he felt we should learn the history of the kingdom as it was happening daily right before our eyes.
This emissary was named Verbelay, and he was far from possessing the self-assurance of the courtier, Monsieur de L. He seemed part soldier and part priest and as it happened he had left the latter profession for the former, having served as a novice at Cluny upon the recommendation of his brother, the bishop of le Puy. But when his habit produced a terrible rash on his young skin, he threw it in the nettles and, becoming a Huguenot, was overcome by a terrible itch to fight. He wore a rapier, a dagger, a pistol stuck in his belt and, above all this weaponry, two glowing black eyes, flattened hair and a large nose to smell out enemy blood. He was, moreover, truly courageous, as we were to learn later.
Verbelay began by thanking the Brethren for the thousand écus they had given to L., which L. had passed on to Duras. The gift had served to strengthen Duras’s artillery, which at the time included but a set of culverins, by the addition of a huge cannon whose appearance gave renewed courage to the Huguenot soldiers at Gourdon. In keeping with their popular southern humour, they had giddily nicknamed it “Mass-chaser”, baptizing it wi
thin the hour not with water but with Cahors wine, a few drops on the new bronze and the greater part in their gullets.
Mass-chaser was to have taken its first shots against the walls of Sarlat, which Duras wanted to take since it was directly on his way to Orleans, and he wanted the advice of the Baron de Mespech, who was renowned for having distinguished himself in a famous siege.
“At Calais,” said my father, “it was a matter of chasing the English from the city. Our duty was clear. But here things are, in essence, more complex. For if it is true that it was a great crime to declare our reformers outlaws, it is likewise a crime to rise up against one’s own sovereign and to take a city within his jurisdiction.”
“I did not come, My Lord,” said Verbelay, growing impatient, “to beg you to reconsider your decision. We are not seeking your armed intervention, but your counsel.”
“Well, then, here’s my counsel, since Monsieur de Duras does me the honour of requesting it thus,” replied Jean de Siorac, somewhat piqued by his guest’s tone. “If Duras’s most direct route to Orleans is through Sarlat, I suggest that Duras make a detour and leave the city behind him.”
“What?” gasped Verbelay, his black eyes shooting sparks. “Abandon this rich bishopric, when money is so lacking for our cause? And a city without a fortress, without a chateau, protected only by a simple wall, a few small towers and a tiny moat?! Why, from the surrounding hills we can look right down into the main square and see everyone’s head and backside!”
Jean de Siorac made no reply, signifying that he had said everything he was going to say. And as the silence grew, Sauveterre, perhaps finding my father’s response a bit too abrupt, continued: “Besides Mass-chaser, how many culverins do you have, Monsieur Verbelay?”
“Six.”
“That’s not many for a siege.”
“But we are 12,000 strong. There are but 300 of them.”
“Three hundred ensconced behind their walls,” remarked Sauveterre, “and who will fight like tigers to defend their wives, their gold and their faith—whatever that faith,” he added with a vague gesture. “Moreover Sarlat has learnt that Duras will attack. The consuls have abundantly stocked the city with provisions and munitions, and many good Catholic noblemen of the region have responded to their appeal: Fontanilles, Puymartin, Périgord, Claude des Martres, La Raymondie, all of these men have organized their forces into four companies which maintain a watch on the walls, bristling with blunderbusses, and, what’s more, they are equipped with artillery which they’ve set up in the large tower of peace.”
“Nevertheless, we’ll take Sarlat!” said Verbelay resolutely.
“In ten days,” replied my father. “Or rather you’ll be able to take it in ten days if—and only if—before the ten days are out Burie, who is now in the Château des Milandes, and Montluc, at Agenais, don’t fall on you from the rear. Monsieur Verbelay, I urge you to repeat what I have said to Duras. He might have taken Sarlat in twenty-four hours in a surprise attack. But your people have talked too much. Sarlat is expecting you, and Burie and Montluc are forewarned and are preparing to throw up some obstacles in your path. Believe me the straightest, the surest and the fastest road to join forces with Condé at Orleans does not pass through Sarlat.”
“I shall faithfully repeat these words, My Lord, and yours as well, Monsieur de Sauveterre,” said Verbelay rising and taking his leave with as much brevity as politeness would allow. But his fiery eyes were ablaze and it was evident he was much displeased with the opinion he had to transmit.
From the window of our tower, Siorac and Sauveterre watched him mount his horse and speed away with his small escort. Sauveterre shook his head: “There’s one excellent piece of advice that will go unheeded.”
“I fear as much,” replied my father, his fists on his hips and his head cocked. “If only Condé had offered me the command of the Gourdon army…”
“But it was yours for the asking…”
“No it wasn’t!” said Siorac impatiently pacing back and forth. “They offered me what? To be Duras’s lieutenant! But Duras is at best a good colonel of the infantry, wedded to routine, and short-sighted. He wants to claim an easy victory for his army by taking Sarlat. But he failed to pretend that he wouldn’t attack, which is what Guise did so cleverly at Calais. He’s lost any advantage surprise might have given him. He’s not going to take Sarlat easily. He’ll probably lose enough time under Sarlat’s walls to be caught and cut to pieces by Montluc and his terrible Spanish infantrymen.
“No!” fumed my father, banging his right fist repeatedly on the table. “The first duty of Duras was to get his army out of this filthy wasps’ nest in Périgord as fast as their horses could carry them, to escape by forced march from Montluc’s claws and to lead his 12,000 men intact to Condé.”
Seated, hands on my knees and, like my brothers, as quiet as a mouse, I listened to all this with admiration and yet some surprise, for I had just become aware that my father, Huguenot and loyalist that he was, might perhaps have rebelled against his king if he had been offered the commander-in-chief position at Gourdon. Jean de Siorac was thus quite right to say that the very question of duty in such troubled times was “in essence quite complex”… So it was, in any case, and only became more so when we learnt at Mespech that on the evening of 3rd October, Duras’s army, having made its approach, had besieged Sarlat. It seemed from the Brethren’s conversations on the matter that a Huguenot victory over a city to which they were attached by so many friendly ties plunged them into very mixed feelings indeed.
“Duras won’t take Sarlat,” said my father with a start when he heard the news.
“But Jean,” observed Sauveterre, “you speak as though you wish the town wouldn’t be taken.”
“But do you yourself wish it?”
“I wish it,” replied Sauveterre, without a trace of enthusiasm, “as a first success of our armies in an unjust war that has been imposed on us.”
“But is this really a success?” asked my father, pacing back and forth impatiently. “Suppose Duras takes the city. What happens then? Our soldiers, who are, after all, soldiers like any others, will perform their usual exploits: sack, murder, rape of young women. They’ll kill a few priests and ransom the very rich. They’ll pillage and denude the churches. They’ll exact tithes from the merchants. And after two days of such chaos, they’ll leave Sarlat as firmly Catholic as when they arrived, and full of new reasons for taking revenge on the reformers. No, no, the fall of Sarlat accomplishes nothing. It’s only in the north of the kingdom, between Condé and Guise, that any resolution will come.”
“On the other hand,” said Sauveterre, “if Duras fails at Sarlat, this failure will deflate the courage of our soldiers and provide a bad augury for what is to follow.”
“Indeed, indeed!” agreed my father, his head bowed. “That’s exactly what I keep telling myself. But imagine 12,000 soldiers let loose in a town the size of Sarlat, which counts but 5,000 inhabitants! My brother, is this what our gospel teaches?”
We learnt the following day that Duras had set up Mass-chaser and two culverins in the gardens of at the foot of the Pissevi hills, not far from the fountain of Boudouyssou. Firing began at eight that morning, and two hours later the opposing wall had been demolished, but Duras’s battery had been so hastily installed, without earthworks to protect it, neither faggots nor gabions to cover it, that the harsh fire from the town had killed the master artilleryman, wounded the artilleryman and forced the rest of the crew to flee. Mass-chaser and the two culverins were thus abandoned in their garden, and any access to them prevented by an uninterrupted hail of bullets from the town walls. If the Sarlat townspeople had had enough troops for a sortie, the three artillery pieces would have been theirs. But they could not consider it and occupied themselves with reparations to the wall on that side.
At ten o’clock that evening, night having fallen, our troops sounded the alarm on all sides, with loud trumpet calls, beating of drums, strange shouts and m
uch shooting and brandishing of ladders, and thanks to this diversion succeeded in removing Mass-chaser and the culverins from the Pissevi gardens and placing them in a more favourable position at the south-west corner of the town, on the Pechnabran hill, where they dominated the walls. There again, they broke down the defences. But Duras’s assaults on 5th and 6th October were repulsed by the town. On the morning of the 6th, Duras, learning that Burie was moving to engage his forces, raised the siege, but not before burning all the outlying houses, the Cordeliers convent and the Château de Temniac.
He set out in great haste through Meyrals and Tayac in the direction of Périgueux, but never reached this city. On the 9th, Montluc caught him by surprise on the plains of Vergt and crushed his army. The carnage was terrible. The peasants joined in and 6,000 Huguenots were killed in the surrounding woods. No quarter was given. The remainder of Duras’s Huguenots fled in disarray, and when Duras reached Orleans he had only 5,000 men, completely broken in strength, hope and valour. The three days he had wasted under the walls of Sarlat had cost the Huguenot party half an army and its first defeat of the war.
A week after the bloody defeat at Vergt, Samson, François and I were sitting in Escorgol’s room in the gatehouse late one afternoon, listening to him weave one of his Provençal tales. But though our watchman told a good tale in a strong, sonorous langue d’oc accent (a bit different from our Périgordian tongue), I could see quite well that my elder brother was listening with but one ear, especially when a tripping little step could be heard above our heads, separated from us by a mere inch of chestnut ceiling which, in his hurry to finish, Faujanet had so roughly laid that you could see light through the planks. I cast a malicious glance at Samson, but innocent as he still was, putting his nights to the same use that Barberine did (I cannot think to whom, save the Devil, I owe such thanks that my guardian angels in the tower slept so soundly), Samson never took his eyes off Escorgol, all ears to his tale and his eyebrows knitting quizzically whenever some Provençal word bewildered him.
