Heretic Dawn

by Robert Merle

  “Messieurs, you’re at fifteen each!” cried the umpire.

  “Now, let’s play,” said the king, teeth clenching and jumping with impatience and spite. However, Nançay did not serve the ball.

  “What are you waiting for, Nançay?” snarled the king.

  “For them to bring me more tennis balls, sire,” replied Nançay with a bow.

  And, indeed, from what I could gather, the rule here was that the valets’ job was to pick up the balls, but instead of giving them to the players, they were to return them to the tennis master, who, alone, had the right to toss them to the server—a slow and pompous process that was unknown in the provinces. Likewise, a single ball was used here for a game of sixty points, after which they put it in the basket and took another—a good method of assuring the same bounce throughout, but one that tended to slow the game down, whereas in Montpellier we were so refined that we used half a dozen balls despite differences in their bounce.

  “Here you go, sire!” called Nançay as soon as the tennis master had supplied him.

  Whether by design or not, he served this ball so softly that the king, taking it on the volley, returned it with such ferocity that Nançay couldn’t touch it. A nice shot, however easy (but in truth also easy to miss) and which the audience applauded with great enthusiasm.

  “Thirty to His Majesty!” cried the umpire.

  “Hurry up with the ball!” cried the king, growing feverish and impatient.

  The tennis master supplied Nançay with a ball and he served, and this time with force. And as the ball rebounded, the king made a very pretty leap and sent it back to the left of Nançay, who, though surprised, sent it so hard to the king’s left that the king missed it.

  “Messieurs, you’re at thirty each!” announced the umpire.

  At this, overcome with a sudden rage that completely silenced the spectators, the king threw his racquet to the ground and stomped on it, piercing the parchment. “By God!” he cried, crimson, his eyes darting flames. “Tennis master from hell! This racquet is nothing but piss and shit, God’s truth! Do you want to see me lose, you knave? Bring me a string racquet and fast!”

  At which the tennis master, ashamed and abashed, ran over with the two racquets that the sovereign had first rejected and that now he immediately scorned, throwing them both to the ground, though neither broke. A hush fell over the arena at this and the mood was quite dark when a pretty page, very beautifully dressed in a crimson doublet, leapt out of the grandstand and, going up to the king, made him a profound bow and said in a clear voice, “Sire, Monsieur de Nemours would be very honoured if you would consent to use his racquet.”

  “The honour will be mine,” replied the king, recovering a courteous tone as quickly as he’d lost it. “Monsieur de Nemours,” he added after a moment, “is the best player in the kingdom.”

  This reply was enthusiastically applauded and considerably relaxed the spectators, who went back to chattering, which included some smiles, certain of which, as far as I could tell, were quite brazen and others openly derisive. While they were going to fetch Monsieur de Nemours’s racquet, I said to Rabastens: “What a smashing return the captain made to the king!”

  “He let himself get carried away in the heat of the moment,” smiled Rabastens. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have hit it so hard.”

  The scorekeeper turned round and, looking at me, said, “Monsieur, do you play?”

  “Daily.”

  “And where would that be?”

  “In Montpellier.”

  “So you don’t know Monsieur de Nemours?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Aha!” replied the man, his sewed-up face wrinkling, and he rubbed his bald head with his right hand, which had the effect of whitewashing his skull since his hand was covered with chalk dust. “As for the captain’s return, I agree that they’re very, very good. But if you could see Monsieur de Nemours’s returns! If you haven’t seen them, you’ve seen nothing at all!”

  “Doesn’t he play against the king?”

  “The king hasn’t invited him to do so,” said Rabastens, with a sly light in his grey eyes.

  “Now, let’s play!” cried Charles IX, brandishing the famous racquet that he’d just been handed.

  “Here you go, sire!” said Nançay.

  And taking up his position, he served the ball with so little force that it dropped no more than a quarter of the way into the king’s side of the court. The king rushed madly to hit it on the first bounce and did so with the end of his racquet, sending it screaming over the rope. The ball barely cleared the rope and was hit so low that it scarcely bounced at all. Monsieur de Nançay, caught off guard, was frozen to the spot and made no attempt to field it.

  “Well, sire,” he laughed, “now there’s a shot that reminds me of your grandfather François I, absolutely unreturnable!”

  At this recollection, which was often evoked at the court, the king smiled gratefully, and the assembly broke into wild applause—as much, I thought, to acclaim the dexterity of the sovereign as to recognize the diplomacy of the courtier’s response.

  “Forty-five for His Majesty!” cried the umpire. “Thirty for Monsieur de Nançay!”

  “Sire,” said Nançay, “hold on to your racquet! I’m going to equalize!”

  “For the love of God,” laughed the king, “you’ll do nothing of the kind! Plague on you, Nançay! ’Sblood! The game will be mine!”

  “I thought,” I remarked to the sergeant, “that, according to royal decree, no tennis player in the arena should tolerate blasphemy, swearing or impiety.”

  “The king,” Rabastens, his face inscrutable, “knows the decree well. It’s he who signed it!”

  “Alas,” said the scorekeeper, who seemed to have a very serious turn of mind, “many of our young gentlemen of the court believe that blaspheming makes a man more valiant and stronger! It’s quite the opposite.”

  “Here you go, sire!” said Nançay, and served up a high, soft shot which the king tried to return on the volley. He didn’t miss it, but aimed too low, and the ball hit the rope and fell into the netting on his side. However, its own momentum carried it under the rope and onto Nançay’s side.

  “It’s my point!” cried the king without waiting for the decision of the umpires.

  There erupted among the spectators much chatter and laughter—for good reason—and I wouldn’t have liked them if I’d been the sovereign. He, however, brandished his racquet and danced about like a child.

  “Umpires, the decision!” he cried in a caustic voice.

  The umpires, who were conferring in hushed tones, raised their heads, and the head umpire proclaimed: “The point is disputed!”

  “What!” screamed the king, suddenly looking like a brewing storm. “You’re disputing the point? That’s scandalous! Look! The ball’s on the other side! Nançay couldn’t reach it!”

  “Assuredly,” conceded Nançay, smiling on the other side of his face, “I was unable to reach it!”

  “Sire,” said the umpire with a bow, “one of us believes the ball, hitting the rope, fell back on your side and then rolled underneath but below the netting.”

  “It’s a scandal,” cried the king, “that such an opinion should be professed in here! What says Her Majesty the queen? I will bow to her wise judgement.”

  There followed a long silence, during which the ladies-in-waiting of Catherine de’ Medici closed ranks around her like a swarm of bees around their queen; and after this swarm buzzed and hummed for a while, one of the most sparkling ladies emerged and came onto the tennis court, swaying in her gorgeous hoop skirt, her bosom ripe as fruit, her lips fresh as strawberries, her face so beautiful and altogether so splendid in her finery that my heart started beating like a bell and my jaws tightened in the terrible appetite I had to lick the whole length of her adorable body.

  This beauty made such a profound and gracious bow to the king that you would have to have been a tiger not to be tamed by her. “Her Majesty
the queen,” she said in a clear, sweet voice, “remembers that when your august father, Henri II, was playing this noble sport and a point was disputed, like today’s, he accepted, in his royal condescension, to have the point replayed.”

  “I shall obey the queen, my mother,” said the king, who had never in his life done otherwise, and bowed politely to his beautiful messenger with a touch of timidity, which I certainly would not have displayed in his place. But, alas, how great was my loss not to be there!

  The tennis master immediately provided a ball to Monsieur de Nançay, who took up his position and said, “Here you go, sire!” And he served his master and sire so well, and so low, that the ball ended up in the net.

  “Point and game to His Majesty!” cried the umpire, greatly relieved.

  And the spectators all vigorously applauded the king’s victory—and, I’d wager, Monsieur de Nançay’s skill at not being too skilful.

  That particular skill was maintained throughout the two sets, the captain winning only one game in the first and two in the second, but those two came after the king had already won five, a handsome advantage that allowed Charles IX to maintain his calm and good manners even though he was in a lather and completely exhausted.

  The king changed his shirt on the court and one of his gentleman gave him a rub-down, both front and back; all the while the king coughed to break your heart, yet not so much that he couldn’t demand the profits from the bet he’d made. The tennis master brought him the money in a hat and I could see the coins shining from my perch above the court. Oh, heaven! How I wished that those coins were ringing in my own purse! I could have put them to such good use!

  The king won fifty écus from the captain of his guards and received 100 from his mother, who must have found this an excellent occasion to reassure her son that he was more precious to her than Coligny, who, in his Huguenot stiffness, would never have agreed to do anything so frivolous as watch a tennis match—let alone place a bet on such a thing. For his part, the king seemed very happy to have acquired these 150 écus, and said out loud (a phrase that was immediately repeated throughout the Louvre) that this money was really his, since he hadn’t had to request it from his treasuries. But, after all, where did the queen mother get this money from if not from the royal treasury?

  “The king,” said the scorekeeper, turning to speak to us and wiping his chalky hand across the scar on his cranium, “is just as supple, vigorous and lively as his royal father was, and,” he added sotto voce, “just like his father, he can’t tolerate losing.”

  “True enough,” agreed Rabastens, “but Henri II enjoyed better health. His son can’t keep from coughing up phlegm and destroying his chest. That’s the reason he gets exhausted so quickly. Tomorrow he’ll spend the entire day in bed to recover from this match.”

  As he was speaking, I went over to the scorekeeper and, to thank him for his kindness, put two sols in his hand. At first he refused to take them, but, at my insistence, he ended up pocketing them, but in a very brusque and surly manner, yet smiling all the while.

  “Monsieur de Siorac,” said Rabastens, “the captain is not busy at the moment, and is enjoying this good and worthy defeat, which has earned him so much favour. Would you like to seize the ball on the rebound? I’ll take you to meet him.”

  “Oh, Sergeant! How much obliged I am! I could never repay you!”

  “So I absolve you of all debt!” laughed Rabastens. “Are you not from the south?”

  As we were descending this spiral staircase, Giacomi took my arm and said quietly, “My brother, go to see Monsieur de Nançay alone. I’ll keep Samson company while you do.”

  I agreed, understanding all too well what he meant and that he was afraid my beloved Samson would say something that would offend the captain. And it’s true that throughout the tennis match, my mind kept returning to Samson and my fears that he was ill equipped to live in this papist Babylon and constantly risked, in his simplicity, exposing himself into incredible dangers. And in the end, as much as I loved him, I regretted not having left him in Maître Béqueret’s pharmacy in Montfort-l’Amaury, and all the more so since they’d so urgently requested it and he himself had so ardently wished it, having so much interest in his glass bottles and finding nothing to interest him in this city of Paris, which had already enchanted me with its beauty and brilliance.

  Rabastens led us to a small room at the entrance to the tennis courts, which he entered without knocking, indicating I should follow him. Monsieur de Nançay was having a rub-down while the tennis master watched.

  He was conversing with a great hippopotamus of an Englishman, clothed in scarlet, hair so blonde it looked white, and a large face as red as a ham, who was paying him compliments about his game, laughing uproariously at every third word, being of an extremely jovial and energetic complexion.

  “Milord,” said Monsieur de Nançay, as he gave me a nod that was all the more courteous since he had no idea who I was, “I thank you a thousand times for your generous compliments, but I’m sure that Queen Elizabeth’s subjects play tennis as well as we French!”

  “Not at all as well!” laughed the “milord”. “I’m amazed by the great number of tennis courts I’ve seen in Paris. From your king to the smallest valet, anyone can get involved!” (He laughed.) “You’d think French people were born with a racquet in their hands!” (And he laughed again.)

  “And do you have the same rules in England as we do, Milord?” asked Monsieur de Nançay, smiling politely.

  “All the same, even the words, except that, before serving, you say ‘Tenez!’ and we say ‘Tenetz!’—which some of our ignoramuses who don’t know French pronounce ‘tennis’!”

  “And do you use the same balls?”

  “We use yours since ours don’t bounce very well.”

  “You mean mine,” said the tennis master, jumping shamelessly into the conversation with great self-assurance, “for I’m the one who sells them to your country, Milord, and no one else, since mine are the best in the kingdom: they’re made with the best leather, and are stuffed with oakum, or with dog hair, and not with white chalk or bran, as some black marketeers do, whom I’ve had outlawed by the king.”

  “Dog hair, eh!” said the milord, and he laughed again, a laugh I was beginning to find quite tiring, especially since I resented the amazing effrontery of the tennis master, who went on and on singing his own praises and importance, to the point where one would believe he was giving orders to the king. But later, when I got to know the court better, I realized that this fellow was simply conforming to common practice, Parisians being so credulous and gossipy that they seem to accept every accomplishment at face value. Which is why they all go around trumpeting their own glory.

  As this chatter went on between the sniggering Milord and the bumptious tennis master on the subject of balls, I watched Monsieur de Nançay, who seemed to be listening, but was, I guessed, a thousand leagues away, and so I was able to study the captain of the guards at my leisure, as his valet gave him his rub-down. He was a tall man, with broad shoulders, well-muscled arms and long sprightly legs, and there was not an ounce of fat on him. He had a square, tanned face with an aquiline nose and a scar on the corner of his fleshy lower lip. His hair, as I think I mentioned, was more pepper than salt, his eyebrows very black and bushy, which gave him, even at rest, a somewhat supercilious air, something that was softened by his fine, ironic but benign look, all of which seemed to me to indicate some scepticism about common beliefs. He appeared very self-assured, circumspect and courteous, and had an elegant way of expressing himself. There was something so polished about him, it brought to mind a stone become perfectly smooth by its interaction with the other stones in the court, but one that was not without its hardness under this suave exterior—not, certainly, hardness of heart, but a toughness derived from his situation and his predicament.

  At length the milord and the tennis master departed, laughing and chuckling, freeing the room and its rotundity of their un
ceasing noise, and Rabastens told his captain who I was and then begged our leave to go off to his fencing lessons.

  “What, a Siorac!” cried Monsieur de Nançay, giving me a warm embrace. “What a delight to see the son of the Baron de Mespech here in the flesh! For if anyone ever deserved to be a baron, it’s your father, who so gallantly fought when we retook Calais from the English. But ’sblood! I still can’t say the name of Calais without my heart beating faster! Or without remembering the bravery of our great captains beneath its walls! The Duc de Guise! D’Aumale! D’Andelot! Thermes! Bourdin! Sénarpont! How many are already dead? How tenderly I remember these names! But none more highly and clearly than Siorac! Good God! I fought elbow to elbow with him when we crossed the ditch in icy water up to our necks to storm the breach our cannon had made in the Château de Calais! And as frozen as we all were, Siorac was mocking the enemy all the way. My good companion never lost his sense of humour, making a thousand jokes and riotous comments, always funny yet fearless in the teeth of extreme peril. A lion in combat, a dove in victory! And once the city was taken, so caring and concerned about our captives that he tolerated no carnage or rapine from his soldiers. But,” continued Nançay, embracing me again, and placing his hands on my shoulders to get a good look at me, “he’s here! I see him! You have his laughing blue eyes, his features, his build, his carriage and his insatiable thirst for life and love that he did! Ah, my son! Don’t tell me Siorac is now hoary, sad and defeated! I’d never believe it!”

  “Captain,” I laughed, “he’s practically as youthful and vigorous as you, despite the fact that he’s ten years older than you.”

  “Well!” replied Nançay, a glint in his eye. “Does he still chase the petticoats?”

  “Like a madman!”

  “And prosperous?”

  “He’s very well off, yes.”

  “Well, you’d never guess it from your doublet!” laughed Monsieur de Nançay, and though his remark stung, I didn’t let it show and laughed with him. “Heavens! An outmoded doublet and, what’s worse, it’s been resewn! At the Louvre! At court! ’Sblood! If we were the same size and build, I’d lend you one of mine!”