Heretic Dawn

by Robert Merle

  “‘I can’t wait!’ cried Angelina. ‘And there I’ll starve to death, far from some people I could name whose ingratitude I abhor.’

  “‘My daughter!’ screamed Madame de Montcalm.

  “But, throwing herself into the coach (while pulling her skirts to her to avoid catching them on the latch), she disappeared from view as Picot, the valet, dropped the window curtains behind her, and if the dispute continued inside the vehicle, as I suspect it did, I heard nothing more. I saddled my horse and remained stationed there quietly until I saw you emerge from the house and struggle with the rascal in the escort who attempted to trample you with his horse. I unsheathed immediately, and had at him, and what the flat side of your blade had so well begun, I finished, putting half an inch of steel into the horse’s crupper and sending it galloping off to the moon.

  “And that’s my story,” Miroul concluded quite simply. But with his mismatching eyes lowered with an air of immoderate modesty, he added, “But as for the pertinence or impertinence of my story, I cannot judge.”

  “Ah, Miroul!” I cried, leaping from my couch, half-laughing, half-weeping, and giving him an enormous hug. “You’re the most pertinent of valets, the most well informed, and the best teaser too, and you have comforted me marvellously!”

  “But my brother,” objected Samson, his blue eyes askance and full of tears, “will Madame Angelina let herself die of hunger? It would be a great sin against our Creator!”

  “Don’t worry.” soothed Miroul. “Who threatens to do it, never does. Madame our mistress loves life much too well. It’s a ruse of war to make her father suffer and give in, that’s all.”

  Yet another knock was heard at the door, and into my little room, which was already as full as an egg, squeezed Giacomi, very surprised to discover us all gathered there, some in tears, others full of laughter and all in each other’s arms. Dame Gertrude, seeing me rise from my ashes, was busy wiping away Samson’s tears and couldn’t help but add to the confusion with the immensity of her hoop skirt, which easily took up as much space as three of Fogacer. This last I introduced to Giacomi, admiring the harmony of their physical presences—they were the same height, with long legs and interminable arms; but their faces differed entirely: the doctor’s so Luciferian, the maestro’s so joyous. They exchanged a quick and lively look—from the one of medical attentiveness and from the other of a very Italian finesse—each judging and gauging the other, and immediately accepting him for what he was—a very rare thing in this zealous century.

  “My good friends!” I cried. “This business has so dried me out and famished me, and I cannot doubt that you, too, suffer from a very strident hunger, as late as it is! Will you all join me for a good repast at Guillaume Gautier’s place?”

  “Well,” said Gertrude, rising from the couch where she’d been comforting Samson, her hoop skirts propelling us all towards the edges of the chamber, “I have to confess that I’m not alone. While passing through Montpellier on my return from Rome, where I’d gone to seek indulgences for my many sins” (and here she sighed and batted her eyelashes) “and where my own chambermaid abandoned me to take up service with a rich and luxury-loving bishop, I learnt that a famous doctor had just died—that is, in Montpellier—leaving his beautiful young servant without employment. I’d heard very good things about her and went to see her immediately…”

  “And who was this doctor?” asked Fogacer.

  “Dr Salomon d’Assas.”

  “What?” I cried. “You mean Zara is your new chambermaid?”

  At this very moment there came yet another knock on the door and before I could respond with “Enter!” Zara appeared (proving that she wasn’t out of earshot of our conversation), long and supple in her Italian grace, balancing her angelic head on her long, languid neck, her large green eyes examining each of us in turn, weighing the effect she had on each of us with such assurance that you would have thought she were a royal princesse and not a chambermaid.

  “Madame,” she began, with but a hint of a curtsey since there was so little space, “did you require my presence?” And as she pushed farther into the tiny chamber we were squeezed together even more, though her dress was hardly as expansive as that of her mistress. And whether it was the effect of this enforced (though pleasant) proximity or that of her captivatingly brilliant beauty, we all fell silent (except for Fogacer), as though dumbstruck or lovestruck—Giacomi more so than any, his eyes nearly popping out of their orbits in his excitement at this vision of loveliness.

  “Well, Zara,” I said at length, “I’m very happy to see you! But this is very sad news that the good Dr d’Assas has died! Were you aware of this, Fogacer?”

  “I knew of it, yes,” replied Fogacer, who knew everything, “but I didn’t tell you, mi fili, knowing that d’Assas was to you what Rondelet had been for my early years: a mentor and a friend.”

  “Oh,” sighed Zara, her marvellous eyes brimming with tears, “that’s exactly what he was for me. But how suddenly he made his departure! The venerable doctor was strolling through his vineyard in Frontignan one evening as healthy and happy as you please, with his arm around me. ‘Ah Zara,’ he said, ‘I have my three loves now: my students, my vineyard and my Zara.’

  “‘How now, Monsieur!’ I answered. ‘What’s this? I’m last on the list?’

  “‘Because you’ll leave me someday, Zara, to take a husband on the porch of a church.’

  “‘Fie then, Monsieur!’ I cried. ‘I’ll never get married, and have got no taste for men.’

  “‘But what about me?’ he laughed.

  “‘Oh, Monsieur,’ said I, ‘that’s another thing altogether. You’re so sweet, tender and affectionate that there’s great comfort in being with you.’

  “At which he laughed again, but then suddenly he clasped his hand to his heart and gave a little cry like a wounded bird, faltered, turned deathly pale and would have fallen to the ground had I not held him up. Alas, if only I could have kept him alive with these weak arms!”

  “Zara, my sweet child, don’t cry!” soothed Gertrude, who seemed so very fond of her chambermaid. And, taking the latter’s fine little hands in her strong Norman ones, she continued, “Zara! Dry your tears or they’ll make your eyes all swollen! After all, didn’t you find a mistress and a friend in me right away?”

  “Oh, Madame,” cooed Zara, her long, gracious body undulating with pleasure, “I’m all yours and you know it very well.”

  But saying this, she glanced, eyes still misty with tears, at Giacomi, at whom, she could see all too well, her beauty had performed a secret sword thrust, one that, despite all of the maestro’s great art, he’d been unable to parry. And that Zara was able to do so many things at once—shed sincere copious tears over the poor d’Assas, cosy up to her mistress while ensnaring Giacomi—astonished me less and less the better I got to know her, cat-woman that she was, despite her very good heart.

  And so Zara joined our company at supper, which brought our number to seven. Gertrude du Luc decided to accompany us on our walk to stretch her legs after the long ride from Montpellier, and ordered her coach to follow us, so Zara decided to ride rather than walk, claiming she’d injured her foot. This was a powerful disappointment to Giacomi, who couldn’t join her in the carriage since, night having fallen, his protection was needed to help ensure the safety of the lady, and indeed we all drew our swords as we emerged from the rue de la Ferronnerie.

  “Oh!” exclaimed Gertrude at the sound of our swords unsheathing. “How lucky I am to have all these huge blades assuring the defence of my little body!”

  Little body? Not likely! She was tall, strongly built and well rounded but, knowing my Gertrude, I knew all too well what happiness she derived from being surrounded by the profusion of our sharpened protrusions. The lady gradually fell silent, clearly enjoying her pretty dreams, and remained so for quite a while, until I said, “My friend, if this coach is yours, as I believe, I would like to escort you with all your horses to Montfort-l
’Amaury, to entrust them to someone who can pasture them in his fields and spare us from the fleecing Maître Recroche will inflict on us for feeding them here.”

  “But how will you get back to Paris?” asked Gertrude, suddenly grasping my right arm as her high heels caused her to stumble on the paving stones.

  “With you, in your coach, when you come back for the marriage celebrations. We can leave Samson at Montfort, since I’ve made up my mind: we’ll be leaving the capital for good straight after the wedding, pardon or no pardon, and I’ll accompany you back to Montfort, if that’s agreeable to you.”

  “My brother,” she said, softly pressing my arm (unable, as she was, to keep from flirting with any man within range of her artillery), “I’d be delighted to have such a strong escort of handsome and brave lads around me!”

  Everything happened as we had arranged it, but so ambiguous are the ways and byways of fortune that, to this day, I cannot decide if it was the right thing or not to leave my horses in Montfort (influenced as I was by my good Huguenot parsimony). My decision was to have the effect of leaving me without any mount in Paris on the night of 23rd–24th August, when we heard the tolling of the bells that launched the massacre of our brothers by the people of the capital. Of course, it would have been a great help to have my Pompée, but only if I’d been lucky enough to mount her and get through the gates of the city before they were closed, imprisoning the unfortunate Protestants within—a fate that was happily avoided by Geoffroy de Caumont, lord of Castelnau and Milandes, who galloped away full tilt, reaching Montfort, and from there, Chartres, where the vidame offered him protection. But once the Paris gates were closed and locked and chains stretched across every bridge, more than one Huguenot, caught in this net, would have been well advised to melt into the population and reach the outskirts on foot, for the guards watching the bridges and gates were mainly on the lookout for men on horseback, not for the poorer folk on foot.

  Before leaving Paris with Dame Gertrude on the morning of the 12th—Maître Recroche looking very put out to have lost the fourteen sols a day that we’d been paying for stabling our horses—I asked Alizon to take me to see an honest moneylender, where I traded my real pearls for an equal number of false ones (which were extremely well crafted and which Alizon quickly sewed onto my doublet in place of the ones she’d removed). This arrangement, which necessitated much bargaining, provided me with 300 écus, which, added to the 200 that the Duc d’Anjou had given me, provided us with a nice little purse, the greater part of which I entrusted to Samson in Montfort, knowing that it would be easier to get the Lord to part the waters of the Red Sea a second time than to get my beloved brother to undo the strings of his purse.

  As for me, I was relieved that he agreed to safeguard our little treasure, having much more confidence in him in this matter than in myself, being of a much less conservative nature than he, in terms of both expenses and my carnal pursuits—though I congratulated myself that I’d been much more chaste, though not necessarily happily so, since coming to Paris. And this thought reminded me to purchase a small ring for Little Sissy, which I’d so offhandedly promised her when leaving Mespech. I sent Miroul off to our lodgings to help Samson do his packing, knowing full well that he’d tease me relentlessly for my excessive largesse for this wench, who was so little inclined to do her housework that he considered her unworthy of any reward whatsoever. Instead Alizon accompanied me, taking me to a jeweller’s shop she’d recommended, but I only succeeded in going from Scylla to Charybdis in this choice, for she peppered me with questions about my gift and then became very upset that I wanted to make such an expensive and “superfluous” present to a simple chambermaid.

  “Fifteen écus!” she sputtered as we left the shop, the jewel safely in my purse. “Fifteen écus for a wench whose only labour is to spread her legs for a gentleman! Fifteen écus, by my faith! That’s about what I give each year to the woman who feeds my little Henriot, and you know how hard it is for me to have to go to the baths after my work at the atelier to lie with gentlemen who please me not at all and take up my nights! Fifteen écus! Blessed Virgin, is this fair?”

  “Calm down, Alizon!” I countered. “I owe some kindness to a wench who is no doubt preparing to deliver my baby.”

  “What?” she gasped. “Venerable doctor of medicine! And the herbs you gave me and that you promised to Babeau wouldn’t do for her as well?”

  “Of course they would, but she wants to be pregnant so she won’t have to do any work at Mespech other than feed her baby.”

  “What?” she snapped angrily. “That one would also be raised in your chateau?”

  “Like my brother, Samson, yes. Would you want him thrown outside the walls along with his mother, when he shares our blood?”

  “Of course not, no!” she confessed. “That’s the honourable thing to do. But I can’t help thinking bitterly about her lot and mine, I who am so dead-tired from work and loss of sleep, and this Gypsy girl, happy as a cow in the Périgordian sun with grass up to her udder! Blessed Virgin! I say my rosary every day that God makes, asking Him to brighten my days, but I don’t see anything shining at the year’s end but these needles and more needles still, the meagre salary of this cheapskate and the baths. Baba!—as Recroche says! Everything goes to the few and the rest get nothing. And if what I’m saying is heresy, then may the Lord pardon me, and my curate as well, but I can’t help thinking that Heaven has forgotten me in my poor earthy jail!”

  Giacomi didn’t come with us to Montfort, not wishing to leave the position that Silvie had obtained for him at the Louvre simply to escort our beautiful Gertrude in her carriage, so there were only three of us to take our five horses to that town, where Maître Béqueret immediately found us a labourer who put them out to pasture for two sols a day and without charging us so much as a sol to drink from his stream.

  Our gentle lady was very sorry to have to leave Samson behind on the 16th to return to Paris to attend the royal wedding, but how could she miss it, when every nobleman worth his salt in France had rushed to this spectacle? And how could she forgo the chance to deck herself out in all the splendid finery and jewellery she’d had fashioned for this great ceremony, which would doubtless be a unique event in her life, and where she’d find at court so many people to see and so many occasions to be seen?

  Miroul offered to climb up next to the coachman, but Gertrude, understanding that he was much more to me than just a valet, invited him to sit in the coach next to Zara and opposite herself and me. Miroul was so delighted to be travelling in such gracious company that I would have imagined he’d take full advantage of the situation, but whether he was so exhausted from the superhuman efforts required by three days spent with Dame Béqueret’s chambermaid, with whom he’d carried on amorous relations during our first stay here, or whether he was intimidated by the overwhelming beauty of Zara, or whether, seeing my own lively interest in her, he decided to yield the field to me, he behaved like a saint in a stained-glass window for the entire journey, his hands folded meekly, his tongue quite tied, and his varicoloured eyes discreetly lowered in respect.

  As for me, I felt almost too much at ease in the semi-darkness of the coach’s interior (the curtains lowered to protect against the August sun), feeling next to my thigh the sweetness of Gertrude’s body and seeing before my eyes the remarkable charms of Zara, who, it must be said, noting the interest that both her mistress and I took in her, was careful to enhance them by every means at her disposal: chattering sweetly away in her sing-song voice; making numerous little flirtatious expressions and glances; turning her long, graceful neck this way and that; impatiently pulling her handkerchief away from her bosom with her fine white hands, and then replacing it with feigned displeasure; or playing with her hair, pulling it down and then rearranging it on top of her head in a gesture that must have required great skill, but whose art was masked by the apparent disorder it produced, if one were to judge by the emotion I felt watching her. But I was careful, neve
rtheless, not to look too often at this bewitching figure, not wishing, as happens far too often, to pass from the comfort of watching to the discomfort of desire. I decided, instead, to close my eyes, and, feigning sleep, began—as I had done often—to pursue sweet daydreams of my Angelina, which my reborn hope now encouraged.

  Despite the splendour of its monuments, Paris now seemed dirty and foul-smelling in the suffocating heat of August after the clean, country air I’d breathed in Montfort! On our arrival, Gertrude invited me to dine in the lodgings she’d rented for three months in the rue Brisemiche, but to tell the truth, I didn’t feel certain enough of my virtue to accept, given how much this journey had already put me to the test. I begged her to drop me off at the rue de la Ferronnerie, which she agreed to most reluctantly, and we parted amid such embraces, inviting glances and warm kisses that only the thought of my poor Samson surrounded by his pharmaceutical vials in Montfort gave me the strength to resist her enticements and stop myself from sliding down the slippery slope. Feeling nearly dizzy with the fury of her assaults, and still dirty and sweaty from the long trip, I decided to head towards the public Old Baths in the grand’rue Saint-Honoré, with Miroul for protection, who left me at the door of this establishment after the assurance I gave him I’d spend the night there.

  “Well, my handsome young gentleman,” cooed the mistress of the baths, her massive, greasy bulk ensconced behind the counter, her eyes, however, sparkling through the thousand folds of her eyelids, “I recognize you from your shining countenance, though you are dressed much more splendidly in your Parisian finery and in the latest fashion than you were before! So what will you have? A bath in a private room as before, and sup and stay the night as well?”

  “Yes, indeed, my good woman!”

  “Babeau! A robe and a towel for the young gent! And would Monseigneur also like Babette to shave your body hair?”

  “Thanks, but no. I’ll keep it the way it is from now on!”