Heretic Dawn

by Robert Merle

  However, the rest of the bunch, having regained their courage, pursued us, and we had barely reached Maître Sanche’s door before they were at our heels. To keep from being cut down from behind, we had to turn on them suddenly, our swords flashing. It was their final assault and their most furious, and I had to marvel at the crazy courage of these desperate rascals, who, having harvested my money, now sought to take my life at the risk of their own, in the name of this bizarre and very particular notion of honour, which, among the least of men as among the most powerful, makes war an inevitable condition of our species. Giacomi and Miroul, feeling more at ease in defending this narrow gateway in which they no longer had to worry about being attacked from behind, relished the chance to dispatch what remained of this horde.

  Having opened the door behind them, I had to call them twice before they would consent to take shelter, whereupon Miroul with a great curse (and he a good Huguenot!) hurled his torch in their faces.

  Once inside and the door bolted, Balsa, Maitre Sanche’s one-eyed assistant, appeared, lantern in hand, looking quite terrified. “Ah, venerable doctor, you’re bleeding!” he cried.

  And, indeed, as I caught sight of myself in a small mirror that hung in the entryway, I saw that the left side of my scalp had a gash two inches long. The wound was neither deep nor serious, but it was pissing blood like a cow in a meadow, and my cheek, neck and collar were all crimsoned. “Ah, Miroul,” I exclaimed, suddenly realizing what was missing, “I’ve lost my handsome doctor’s bonnet all festooned with gold braid! It must have fallen off when I received this wound!”

  I nearly went back to look for it, so mortified was I that, on the very day I’d received high honours at the Royal College from Chancellor Saporta, those ruffians had stripped me of my trophy. But instead, I needed to clean and dress my wound and bandage Miroul, who’d been slashed in the shoulder—Giacomi alone having escaped injury, so excellent was his skill in battle, his sword point sharp, his reach long and his thrust lightning fast.

  We hadn’t yet gone off to bed when an archer came to ask after us on behalf of Cossolat, who, finally appearing at the place des Cévennes—since the night watch had been beaten earlier in the evening in another part of town—had arrested the rascals we’d wounded and, without even taking them to jail, had sent them with their boots on to the gallows. (“With their boots on” is, of course, just an expression, since none of these beggars could afford a decent pair of shoes, much less boots.)

  I sent the archer back to Cossolat to ask him if he would mind looking for my doctor’s square bonnet, which I desperately needed for my triumphal parade the next day. However, the next morning, having received no news of it, I sent a town crier through all the neighbourhoods of the city promising a reward to two écus (the only money I had left) for anyone who would return it to me. But this promise of a reward was to no avail, other than to spread the news among the workers and inhabitants of the city of our previous night’s clash in la Caussalerie, which Cossolat’s guards (who, of course, had not seen it) recounted everywhere they went, embellishing the numbers of our assailants with each retelling so that, in the end, we three were reputed to have killed or wounded at least a hundred brigands in one night.

  Meanwhile, the loss of my doctor’s bonnet bothered me no end and so I wrote a letter to my doctor-father Saporta, which Miroul delivered. The chancellor replied quite reasonably that, since I’d received a nasty scalp wound, I couldn’t wear a bonnet and so would be dispensed from having to wear one in my triumphal procession.

  And what a triumph it was! I was acclaimed throughout the city by large crowds—not, of course, because I’d been promoted to doctor, since there were a dozen or so of these parades each year, but because I and my two companions had so stoutly manhandled an army of bandits, who were the terror and scourge of the good people of the entire city, and who nightly committed horrible excesses, stoving in the doors of houses, killing noblemen and rich merchants indiscriminately, and raping their wives and daughters.

  My mare Accla’s black coat shone with all its mirroring light after Miroul brushed her down that morning, despite his wound, though luckily it was only to his right shoulder. With infinite patience he had braided her mane and her tail, weaving ribbons of red silk at every tuft and fitting a crimson blanket under the shiny pigskin saddle that Petremol had made for me. In this finery, preceded by the beadle Figairasse and my musicians playing happy tunes, and followed by the royal professors and the ordinary doctors, the assistants and medical students, all in their academic robes and some mounted on horses, others on mules, I rode through the most beautiful streets of Montpellier amid a crowd of people applauding me vociferously as if I’d just slain the dragon that was terrorizing them. You might well imagine that being so appreciated by the people—in the same city where I’d been a public enemy after having shortened the suffering of the atheist abbot Cabassus—I felt like a peacock on my beautiful Accla, though I was careful not to let it show, but maintained an inscrutably serene expression throughout, except, here and there, to give a wink to some of the beauties who were applauding me from their windows decorated with flowers.

  My parade complete, I hurried to the Joyeuse residence, but of what happened there I shall say not a word, having offended some of the ladies who read the previous volume of my memoirs and were shocked by some of the descriptions of our love-making. And though I believe that these same ladies have much more reason to be offended by what’s going on around them in their daily lives than by the spiciest of tales they read in books, I set too much store by their friendship to risk wounding them further.

  Isn’t it amazing how like the teeth of a saw is a man’s destiny! Promoted to the rank of doctor with high honours after my triduanes, I was nearly brought low the next day by the knives of a group of brigands. And, barely having escaped these assassins, the following day I find myself acclaimed as an angel and a hero by this sheepfold of a populace. And that very evening, I receive the laurel wreath from the hands of the most suave, beautiful and noble woman in Montpellier, who, having heard of my losses, rushes to compensate and comfort me. Ah! Life is but a dream! I have come to see that the fatal Tarpeian Rock lies but a stone’s throw from the Capitol’s glory, and that ’tis Fortune’s whim to send us scuttling back and forth between them.

  The only thing missing from my present happiness was my beloved Samson, who was being held tightly in the arms of his Circe at the needle shop and was unable to escape the hungry ogress’s charms for the entire five days she spent in Montpellier on her pilgrimage to Rome—and during these five days, they left their bed only for the dining table, and the dining table only for their bed. Of course there was another, much higher pleasure, which I longed for, and whose marvels I continued to hope for in my heart of hearts. But of that, more later.

  My purse brimming over, I left the Joyeuse residence, overcome with gratitude for the woman who resided there, and returned at a gallop to my lodgings, with Miroul and Giacomi riding at my sides with swords unsheathed, since Cossolat had advised me not to walk the city’s streets at night, fearing that the brigands, thirsty for revenge, would ambush me.

  As soon as I was back in my room, there came a knock at my door.

  “Ah, Giacomi! Come in!” I smiled. “Did you ask Balsa whether anyone has returned my bonnet?”

  “Alas, Monsieur doctor,” sighed Giacomi, “no one has come! I’m sorry for you, both for the loss and for the augury.”

  “Augury, Giacomi?”

  “But don’t you see?” replied Giacomi, standing at attention before me. “It couldn’t be clearer! If your bonnet has disappeared on the day you obtained it, then fate has decreed that you will never exercise your calling!”

  “Giacomi!” I replied, very put out. “That’s nothing but superstition! Fortune does not provide signs that allow us to foretell the future. I dearly love my new profession and I’ll practise it with or without the bonnet! It’s not the bonnet that matters, but the head beneath it, a
nd this one I’ve done my best to fashion so that it can cure—God willing!—man’s diseases.”

  “Monsieur doctor,” Giacomi replied without giving me one of his usual Italian bows, which, however low, never communicated baseness but rather high breeding, “whether the augury is good or bad we cannot know! Che sarà, sarà!†† I would be very unhappy to have offended you in any way, especially when I have to take my leave of you.”

  “Take your leave, Giacomi? To go where?” I gasped.

  “In truth, I know not,” he replied, his visage radiant as usual, as if the uncertainty of his future were a laughing matter.

  “Then why must you leave me?” I said with some heat. “Without you, Giacomi, without your marvellous swordsmanship and your wise counsel in the face of danger, I would certainly have died.”

  “Without you, Monsieur doctor,” answered Giacomi, his black eyes protruding out of his smiling face, “I would be locked in a jail. But…” he continued with an elegant gesture of his long arms, at the end of which he fell silent.

  “But, Giacomi?”

  “Monsieur doctor, I would not wish you to think that I do not like Miroul, whom I hold, on the contrary, as one of the best fellows in all creation.”

  “But, Giacomi?”

  “But I’m not completely comfortable sharing a bed with a servant. Monsieur doctor, do not, I beg you, think I’m arrogant. In Italy, only gentlemen of good breeding may become masters-at-arms and I’m held by everyone in the town where I was born to be a noble man if not exactly a nobleman.”

  “Ah, maestro!” I replied. “I confess I wasn’t exactly sure of your condition, though I’ve heard tell that master swordsmen from Italy, whether in the king’s or the Duc d’Anjou’s service, are considered gentlemen at the French court. Here, as you know, a master-at-arms is considered only a soldier, expert in the exercise of his skills, but not necessarily in the knowledge of his art, limited in his understanding, rustic in his manners. I place you, maestro, well above the best of them, and if this is so important to you, instead of Miroul, I shall invite you to share my own quarters for lack of separate chambers in which to lodge you.”

  “Ah, Monsieur doctor!” cried Giacomi. “How grateful I am for your amiable, courteous and infinite beneficence, but again, I beg you not to think that I’m acting out of pride or silly posturing. It’s not so much for myself that I want respect, but rather for my sword, which is, for me, at once a rank, an art, a profession and a philosophy.” This said, he placed his long, delicate hand nervously on its sheath. “And if you would condescend to one more thing, Monsieur doctor, and, out of your goodness, address me with the polite form vous rather than the familiar form tu, you would complete my happiness.”

  “Maestro!” I laughed. “If that’s all it takes to keep you, I’ll call you vous from matins to vespers! In my arms, my friend! Give me a hug!” And pulling him towards me, I gave him a hug and kissed both his cheeks, though he had to lean over a bit so I could reach them; but he returned my kisses frankly, then stepped back and patted my shoulders and back with his long hands.

  “Monsieur doctor,” he said when we’d finished our endearments (which, I noticed, brought tears to his shining, black eyes), “I believe that you are of the religion?”

  “I am.”

  “I am Catholic, myself,” he said gravely, though he couldn’t, for all that, keep his face from looking happy, “and though I am aware of all the terrible abuses that have corrupted the mother Church, I have to tell you that I have no intention of leaving her, since I feel like the best of bad sons, not very happy in her lap, but less happy outside it.”

  “That’s fine,” I smiled, looking him in the eye, “a lukewarm papist and a not very zealous Huguenot: each of us can accommodate the truths of the other.”

  “Or the errors,” added Giacomi, returning my smile. “But, Monsieur doctor, what shall my daily duties be?”

  “Maestro, you shall teach me the finer points of your art. I do not fence very well, as you’ve observed.”

  “Not true! As far as I could tell by the light of the torch, you attacked in the French manner, that is to say, furiously, with ardour and without a moment’s hesitation, covering your mistakes by damnable bodily feints and using your whole torso where a turn of the wrist would have sufficed.”

  “Well, maestro,” I cried, “you’ve made me out to be as gross and untutored a swordsman as if I were a cook in a fight with only his spit to defend him! But just wait! I’ll be a very serious student!”

  “And I, Monsieur doctor, shall be your vassal,” returned Giacomi, with one of his deepest and most graceful bows, and added, quoting Dante, in his beautiful and expressive Italian, “Tu duce, tu signore e tu maestro!”‡‡

  “E tu maestro!” I cried. “But Giacomi, you’re using the tu form with me!”

  “It’s the poetic tu,” he answered, though his contrition seemed a bit feigned, since he was the most self-assured man I’d ever encountered.

  “Giacomi,” I continued, as though I’d momentarily forgotten myself in the emotion of this exchange, and liking this maestro already more than I could say, “I have a younger brother whom I hold very dear and an older brother whom I care little for. Would you consider becoming my older brother, by choice if not by blood?”

  At this, Giacomi fell silent and, though he smiled in gratitude, I felt as though he was taken aback by my French impetuousness and I blushed and couldn’t speak.

  Seeing this, the maestro, guessing my confusion, took my two hands in his and said with courteous gravity: “With all my heart, Monsieur doctor, if you really believe I am worthy of such an honour.”

  Ah, Giacomi! I still feel a rush of emotion as I write these lines, so many years having withered and been blown to the winds since that day. And though I seemed to be fishing impulsively and without due consideration of the consequences of my offer, I now feel, after much reflection, given the mettle you displayed in the first test of our friendship, I was right to bind my soul to yours with grappling hooks of the strongest steel!

  My other brother, after his five days spent in that ardent furnace, returned thinner and dreamy, and slept for twenty-four hours straight, after which he abandoned himself to despair for sinning against Our Lord’s law, having fornicated outside the sacrament of marriage, at one moment berating himself mercilessly, at the next talking endlessly of his sorceress, with a light in his azure eyes in which we could read the delights that had devoured him so completely without, however, satisfying him. Indeed, for some people the abyss of ardent pleasures has no end and, once plunged therein, they can never climb back out.

  “Ah, Monsieur doctor!” Giacomi opined with a sly smile. “When I hear you talk about your brother Samson, it occurs to me that this Norman wench has a lot in common with my wench from Genoa, and of the pair we’d do well to quote the divine Dante, who said of hell: ‘Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.’”§§

  Meanwhile, after the sanctimonious lady had left for Rome, whinnying after the indulgences that they were selling like a mare after her oats, I recounted to Samson our battle in the rue de la Caussalerie.

  “Oh, Pierre!” he moaned in shame. “While you out were risking your life, I was holed up, wallowing in sin. If those rascals had killed you I could never have forgiven myself!”

  “But here I am, alive, my brother! And you’ll be with me when we go to Barbentane to see my Angelina, accompanied by Miroul and my brother Giacomi.”

  “Your brother, my brother?” wondered Samson, his azure eyes suddenly clouded, whether in confusion or pain I couldn’t tell. He looked at me quizzically for a moment and then came right to the point like an arrow shot from a crossbow, his transparent eyes staring at me with such candid innocence “Do you love him more than me?”

  “Of course not, my Samson!” I cried, rising from my stool and embracing him; holding him tight, I said, overflowing with emotion, “Samson, you are the summit and cloudy peak of my fraternal love and no one can ever replace y
ou there!”

  He brushed away his tears with the back of his right hand and, not being one of those jealous hearts that never trust anyone, he believed me without hesitation and was immediately and for evermore satisfied.

  The next morning I received a letter from Angelina that plunged me into despair. Monsieur de Montcalm, it seemed, had been embroiled for months in a lawsuit concerning a mill he owned in Gonesse, and had now decided that it would be most advantageous for his suit to go to Paris and plead with the judges there.

  As he could not bear to be separated from them even for a day, he was taking his wife and daughter with him.

  “Oh, Monsieur,” wrote Angelina,

  what a nasty turn of events. I shall already be arrived in the capital when you receive this and very vexed, I assure you, to be there, as I was looking forward with such joy to seeing you at Barbentane after your triduanes! And I haven’t any idea how soon we will return to Provence, since this sort of lawsuit can drag on as slowly as a slug on a lettuce leaf and create so much slime you completely lose your way in it! Oh, Monsieur, I’m all the more furious since I’ve heard Monsieur de Montcalm tell my mother that he intends to marry me off in Paris, and he will be very surprised to discover that, as I love no one, nor anything as much as you, I am firmly and obstinately opposed to such a plan. For I have pledged my love to you till death one day part us—an alternative, may God be my witness, I do not wish for, desiring only the inexpressible happiness of one day being wholly and entirely yours.

  Ah, dear reader, has anyone ever received a more innocent, touching and naive letter? And can you imagine the mix of bitterness and joy these adorable lines produced, since Angelina was both so near to my heart and yet so far away, there being no way I could possibly join her in Paris were she to remain there for a long time? How could I get to the capital? With what money? And under what pretext could I possibly persuade my father to allow me to make such a perilous and expensive journey?