Fortunes of France: The Brethren

by Robert Merle

  Beside the great fireplace—for on winter nights our watchman would need a good fire to keep him awake—a spiral stone staircase opened into the wall leading to the floor above, so twisted and narrow that the furniture destined for Diane and her chambermaid had to be hoisted through their window. Their fireplace was on the north side, set exactly above ours, the two flues joined before exiting through the stone roof. According to my father’s orders, a blazing fire burned in the fireplace above us, and if you listened closely (as François was doing) you could hear the whistling and crackling of the burning logs.

  The spiral staircase was separated from the first floor by two solid-oak doors furnished with heavy bolts, one on the first floor and one at our level, but the latter was now open, and we could see the first steps winding round the central stone pillar, well lit by a pretty little window just out of sight around the curve, so that all we could see of it was the light it shed on the handsome ochre steps that Jonas had cut. I remember that, sitting as I was, on a stool, leaning against the stone wall and listening to Escorgol, my eye, wandering about the room, often lingered on this shining, sweetly mysterious enclosure, where the steps wound around the pillar right up to the bolted oak door which enclosed our captive, whom we’d never seen except from afar at her window. As for me, I could enjoy the pleasures of my imagination in all this, but I could see it was a different story altogether for poor François, who, as little Hélix said, was already “smitten and trapped”. With mournful eyes, and trembling lips, he stared fixedly at the luminous stairs set in the wall as if they were the forbidden entrance to the Garden of Eden.

  Escorgol suddenly stopped and, closing his eyes, said, “What ho! I hear someone!” I jumped up and ran to the narrow window overlooking the machicolations and searched the dusty road curving away towards the les Beunes farm from the gatehouse. I could spy nothing, and, other than occasional birdsong, could hear nothing. Samson came up beside me and also lent an ear. Nevertheless Escorgol, who had seized the blunderbuss beside his bed, closed his eyes again and then, immediately putting the weapon back in its place, said, “It’s someone coming alone and barefoot.” Having said this, he came up to the window to have a look for himself over our heads at the still empty road. François did not budge an inch, remaining seated in his chair lost not in his thoughts, but only in one.

  At the far end of the road as it emerged from les Beunes, a head appeared, then a torso and finally the whole body. By her step there could be no doubt that it was a wench. As she approached I was struck by the fact that she had so much black hair that you could hardly see her eyes, yet she wore few clothes, her legs and her breasts half visible through her rags—robust and proud enough despite her poverty.

  “What do you want, wench?” called Escorgol from the window, watching her with a half-excited, half-defiant air. “If you’re begging, be on your way. Today we give no alms.”

  “I’m no beggar,” said the girl boldly. “I’ve come to speak to Jonas the stonecutter for the masters of Mespech.”

  “Wait! I recognize you!” I cried leaning out the window. “You’re Sarrazine, the girl the Gypsy captain left us as a hostage four years ago. Uncle de Sauveterre found you a place at la Volperie in Montignac.”

  “That’s me, Sarrazine,” she smiled, raising her head as if her name were some sort of title.

  “If you know her,” warned Escorgol, handing each of us a dagger, “go down and let her in the side door, but close it quickly once she’s inside and triple bolt it. I’ll remain here on watch.”

  I ran down the small spiral staircase on the opposite side of the fireplace from the one just described and which had the same dimensions, except that it was lit only from the arrow slits in the walls fixed there to enable us to kill any attackers who might have succeeded in breaking down our doors. Samson was at my heels, and as we threw back the three heavy bolts from the side door, he on the right and I on the left, we concealed our daggers behind our backs as my father had taught us to do. I set the chain, which allowed but a small opening of the door, and by this narrow aperture Sarrazine was able to squeeze in by crouching and turning sideways. Once she was through the doorway, I grabbed her roughly by the arm and, placing the point of my dagger at her throat, ordered her to keep still until Samson closed the door. This done, Samson seized her by the other arm and, turning her around, pointed his blade in her back and told her that I was going to search her. Which, returning my dagger to my belt, I did, at first quite carefully, inspecting the wicker basket she was carrying in her hand, and finding it empty. However, at the first frisk, realizing that the few clothes she wore (and these few quite full of holes) could hide no weapon, my search gained in thoroughness what it lost in roughness.

  Sarrazine began to giggle and twist and shot me a saucy look from beneath her jet-black hair. “By my faith, young Master,” she laughed with a raucous voice, “you’ve grown quite up in four years, I’ll warrant, judging by the way you’re inspecting me! Tell your red-headed brother not to poke my back so hard.” And still laughing and struggling in our grip she announced, “I bear no other arms than those that make men’s perdition.”

  “Ah but these you bear aplenty!” I rejoined, giving her a look that made her struggle even more.

  “Sheathe your knife, Samson, and raise the portcullis,” I said, holding Sarrazine by the arm, not out of any necessity but because her firm, cool flesh was so pleasing to my fingers and because I was so moved by the novelty of her arrival at a time when we were all so lugubriously shut up in Mespech by the troubles of the time and the decree that made us all outlaws. For there was no question of our being able to leave our walled enclosure, not even to go to Sarlat, where the most avid of the papists now held sway.

  The portcullis was raised, then lowered. We gave a reassuring sign to Escorgol, who watched us enviously from his window—my brother François now being his sole audience, if he was listening at all. I did not hesitate long over whether to lead Sarrazine to Sauveterre or to Jean de Siorac, immediately deciding in favour of the latter, knowing what a sour face the older man would make at this wench and what pleasure she would bring my father. I also calculated that he would let us stay for his conversation with her. I then made sure that she was clean under her ragged garments and her dusty feet, that her hair was washed and her breath sweet-smelling so that she would in no way offend my father’s sensitive nose.

  I thus ushered the maid into my father’s library and told him who she was. “Ah! Greetings Sarrazine! I’ve often heard news of you these last four years!” said Jean de Siorac rising to meet her, and enveloping the young woman with his blue-eyed gaze from which the sadness momentarily took flight. “And what brings you here?” he added with his old gaiety.

  “To complain, My Lord,” replied Sarrazine, making a deep curtsey, her ragged shirt falling open to her waist, a spectacle I did not miss a whit of, nor my father either, I suspect. And she added, lowering her eyes: “Your stonecutter, Jonas, has had his way with me.”

  “What’s this?” gasped my father, pretending to frown. “But this is a capital crime! And demands the gallows! And where did this happen? On the road? By hill and dale?”

  “In his cave,” affirmed Sarrazine with a hypocritical wink.

  “And what were you doing in his cave, my poor woman?” said Jean de Siorac.

  “I came to see his wolf, hearing what a marvel it was that he’d tamed her.”

  “The marvel is,” laughed my father, “that you walked five leagues barefoot from Montignac to Jonas’s cave just to see this wolf. Did Jonas invite you there?”

  “No, indeed, My Lord. I’d not laid eyes on him since he untied me from the pole where the Gypsy captain had left me. And yet when he saw me in his cave he was very nice to me.”

  “So I’ll warrant,” said my father.

  “He gave me a drink of goat’s milk, and since I was tired and his wolf was asleep he put my head on her flank and told me to pet her. Which I did. Then he stretched out beside
me and I said, ‘But you’ve also got beautiful fur on your chest, Jonas.’ And with my other hand I caressed him. And with all that caressing of those two hides, with the wolf moaning sweetly beneath me and Jonas staring at me with his two eyes big as moons, after a while, by some strange magic, I found I was no longer a virgin.”

  A deep silence followed this recital, which set all three of us to dreaming, and even my innocent little brother Samson was blushing.

  “I’m afraid I don’t perceive the magic to this,” said Jean de Siorac.

  Sarrazine batted her lashes. “But he had his way with me.”

  “To some extent,” mused my father. “Nonetheless, if you insist, I must exercise my seigniorial justice and send Jonas bound hand and foot to the gallows.”

  “Oh no, no, no!” cried Sarrazine passionately shaking her black mane. “This is no time to hang him, just when I want to marry him!”

  “Now here’s a wench without rancour!” laughed my father. “And what about Jonas?”

  “He wishes it too, according to your Huguenot rites.”

  “But aren’t you a Catholic?” asked my father, suddenly growing serious.

  “I was raised in the faith of the Prophet Muhammad,” explained Sarrazine simply. “But the Gypsies turned me into a Catholic. But from now on, I shall be of the religion of my husband.”

  “Which is to say that a husband is worth a Huguenot service. Well then, cheer up, Sarrazine,” said Jean de Siorac. “You’ve not wasted your time going all that way from la Volperie to Jonas’s cave!”

  “Well, I’ve thought a lot about it these four years, and I’ve never seen a prettier or stronger man than Jonas in the whole countryside of Montignac.”

  My father burst out laughing. “Well, then it’s as good as done, Sarrazine.”

  But she, ceasing her shaking and trembling for a moment, said gravely, “Not quite, My Lord.” (And here she made a curtsey as deep as the first.) “I do not wish to live in a cave like a savage, with goats and a wolf. You must give Jonas permission to build a proper house over the cave.”

  “Ah, so that’s it, you clever scamp!” laughed my father.

  At that moment we heard Sauveterre’s stumpy gait on the stair, then a knock on the door, and he appeared, frowning sourly as soon as he caught sight of Sarrazine. He immediately glanced apprehensively towards Jean de Siorac.

  “Jean,” said Siorac, repressing the gaiety that Sarrazine had brought into our ranks, “this is Sarrazine, the hostage that you found work for in la Volperie. She wants to marry Jonas according to our religion, on condition that he build her a house over his cave.”

  “A house!” exclaimed Sauveterre, scandalized, raising his eyes heavenward.

  “Monsieur, you have everything you need for it and in abundance!” replied Sarrazine hotly and not without effrontery. “Stone for the roof and the walls, limestone and clay for mortar, chestnut trees for the beams and a stonemason to build it! And why should Jonas, who serves you well and who fought for you bravely against the Gypsies, not have a house like a good Christian?”

  “The wench has a well-oiled tongue, at least,” said Sauveterre little pleased by her speech. He sat down with a sigh, but said no more, already guessing what Siorac was thinking. Indeed, the two brothers left off speaking for some moments in order to avoid a confrontation.

  “Sarrazine, what is this wicker basket you’re holding?” my father enquired, breaking the silence.

  “A present I bring your household, My Lord,” replied Sarrazine, bobbing a curtsey, but this time refraining from the full bow, knowing how much it would distress Sauveterre. “I made it with my own hands,” she said proudly, “with willow shoots from the les Beunes farm which are plentiful down below the quarry.”

  “Let’s see it,” said Sauveterre, reaching out and taking the basket from her, which he examined carefully on each side, testing its construction and weaving. “This is very good work, Sarrazine,” he continued, softening somewhat his tone. “You didn’t waste your time with the Gypsies.” He looked at her—certainly not in the way my father looked at her, but with a look reflecting his calculated meditation. “And do you know how to make a grape-gatherer’s hod?”

  “I’ve already made one,” she replied with feigned feminine modesty, refraining from her usual bodily wiles for she could feel now that with Sauveterre things were beginning to go her way. “But,” she added, “it takes more time and bigger willow shoots.”

  “So tell me,” said Sauveterre coldly, “could you make four hods a month?”

  “I think so.”

  Sauveterre glanced at my father and, in a single look, fell into agreement. “Well, then, we’ll build you a house to lodge the both of you, Sarrazine, and you shall make us four grape hods a month. You’ll get no pay for the first year, but after that we’ll give you two sols a hod.”

  “Three,” corrected my father.

  “Three,” Sauveterre conceded, shrugging his shoulders with some vexation.

  Sarrazine was overwhelmed and nearly jumped for joy when I walked her out to the main gate, reckoning twelve months’ labour of fingers, arms and back a small price to pay for the joy of living in a house built by her husband—a construction that could only enrich the two masters’ domain.

  They were married, according to our Huguenot practice, two days later, since a longer wait was not feasible given that they already had carnal knowledge of each other. And straightaway afterwards, Sarrazine waded barefoot into the cold waters of the les Beunes river in search of willow shoots. And so it was that from that day on Mespech entered the business of selling wicker grape baskets, while the wine barrels made by Faujanet continued to sell at a brisk pace, an alliance which, if I may judge by the meticulous accounts kept by Sauveterre in the Book of Reason, turned a pretty penny.

  The news of the defeat of our forces by Montluc at Vergt reached Guise while he was besieging the Huguenots at Rouen. That city was well defended by Montgomery, a tall, stiff young man for whom Catherine de’ Medici had conceived a mortal hatred ever since his broken lance had pierced her beloved husband’s eye during their jousting match. That the accident, now three years past, had happened completely by chance—Montgomery having run this last course at Henri’s express demand and entirely in self-defence—in no way altered the passionate Italian’s resentment. This little baby-faced cannonball of a woman with a carnivorous jaw had mastered the art of dissimulation from the many humiliations of her reign, which included Henri’s preference for another woman. She could smile through those big wide eyes at her interlocutor even while she plotted his death, patiently biding her time, waiting for the right moment.

  Montgomery’s time had now arrived. The Huguenot would pay twice over: once for his revolt against Charles IX, and again for the broken lance he’d neglected to throw to the ground. Every day, the regent went down into the trenches, braving the cannonades and musket fire, and exhorted her troops by her heroic example.

  Guise had intended to make his first strike against Orleans, but when Condé abandoned le Havre to Elizabeth of England by virtue of the fateful Treaty of Hampton Court, which had so outraged the Brethren, he hurried to lay siege to Rouen to head off any English disembarkation, which would have caused panic in Paris. He could not count on Elizabeth’s lack of zeal in keeping her promises now that she had le Havre and could wait until the end of the war to exchange it for Calais.

  The Catholic army felt victory within its grasp once it had taken Fort Sainte-Catherine, which dominated Rouen from the top of a bluff. This army was commanded in fact by Guise, though he belonged in principle to the triumvirate (Guise, Saint-André and the constable). Their ranks had lately swelled to four to include the king of Navarre, Anthoine de Bourbon. One of the first great lords besides Condé to have converted to the reform, Bourbon had a second time abjured his faith in return for a vague promise from Felipe II of Spain that he should regain Spanish Navarre, and once again heard Mass and worshipped the Virgin.

  His wi
fe, Jeanne d’Albret, scorned such recantations. She had remained in her little kingdom of Navarre, firm in her faith, disdaining the hypocrisies of the court. But Anthoine was a weak and flighty man who always believed the last person to bend his ear and followed the first skirt to catch his eye. “Totus est venereus,” wrote Calvin, who had never trusted him.

  At Rouen, he tried to match the queen mother’s bravery by his temerity in having his dinner table set directly behind a wall on which the Huguenots were firing. Having eaten his fill, and forgetting where he was, he stood up at the end of the meal and was immediately felled by enemy fire. Once the city was taken, he had himself carried through the streets by his soldiers on a litter to give himself the ultimate satisfaction of watching the massacre of the very Huguenots whom he had previously shared prayers with. That done, he immediately died as stupidly as he had lived, leaving behind a wife who was really the man of the family and a son who, luckily for the fortunes of France resembled his mother: the future Henri IV.

  The sack of Rouen was the worst that can be imagined, but Catherine de’ Medici did not enjoy the particular pleasure she had been anticipating: Montgomery escaped. He leapt into a boat and was taken downriver. Reaching the chain that the Catholics had stretched across the Seine at Caudebec, he promised his galley slaves their freedom if they could save him. The convicts set to shouting, pressed their oars and headed straight at the obstacle, which gave way. Montgomery was thus able to reach the sea and, ultimately the English coast. But destiny did not let him off so easily for she arranged a second meeting with Catherine de’ Medici, two years later, this one ending in his death.