City of Wisdom and Blood (Fortunes of France 2) E-Book

Robert Merle

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

The second swaggering instalment of Fortunes of France, the first volume of which, The Brethren, took the UK by storm last year Montpellier in 1566-only fools walk the streets at night unarmed, while a profession of faith in the wrong company can lead to a knife in the back. Not even this proud city of philosophers is safe from the menaces that endanger the peace of France. The city militia are struggling to contend with the lawlessness and religious hatred that threaten to tear the whole country in two. Now an adult, Pierre de Siorac must travel south on dangerous roads to the great university town, accompanied by his strapping but naive brother Samson and the crafty Miroul. Well-armoured, with swords and pistols at their belts, the trio are confident of repelling any bandits who cross their path, but their new life away from the safety of their Perigord home will bring with it many new dangers and delights. Continuing the colourful story that began with The Brethren, City of Wisdom and Blood is the second book in the sweeping saga, Fortunes of France. Robert Merle (1908-2004) was born in French Algeria, before moving to mainland France in 1918. Originally an English teacher, Merle served as an interpreter with British Expeditionary Force during the Second World War, and was captured by the German army at Dunkirk, the experience of which served as the basis for his Goncourt-prize-winning Weekend at Zuydcoote. He published the 13 volumes of his hugely popular Fortunes of France series over four decades, from 1977 to 2003, the final volume appearing just a year before his death in 2004.

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Praise forThe Brethren and Fortunes of France

“Modern-day Dumas finally crosses the channel” Observer

“Swashbuckling historical fiction… For all its philosophical depth [The Brethren] is a hugely entertaining romp… The comparisons with Dumas seem both natural and deserved and the next 12 instalments [are] a thrilling prospect” Guardian

“Historical fiction at its very best… This fast paced and heady brew is colourfully leavened with love and sex and a great deal of humour and wit. The second instalment cannot be published too soon” We Love This Book

“A highly anticipated tome that’s been described as Game of Thrones meets The Three Musketeers” Mariella Frostrup on BBC Radio 4’s Open Book

“A vivid novel by France’s modern Dumas… [there is] plenty of evidence in the rich characterisation and vivid historical detail that a reader’s long-term commitment will be amply rewarded” Sunday Times

“A sprawling, earthy tale of peril, love, lust, death, dazzling philosophical debate and political intrigue… an engrossing saga” Gransnet

“A master of the historical novel” Guardian

“So rich in historical detail… the characters are engaging” Sunday Express

“Compelling… a French epic” Kirkus Reviews

“This is old-fashioned story-telling. It has swagger and vibrancy with big characters… A gripping story with humour and strength and real attention to historical detail” Mature Times

“Swashbuckling” Newsday

“Cleverly depicts France’s epic religious wars through the intimate prism of one family’s experience. It’s beautifully written too” Metro

“A lively adventure… anyone keen on historical fiction [should] look forward to the next instalment” Telegraph

“The spectacular 13-volume evocation of 16th-17th-century France” Independent

“The Dumas of the twentieth century” Neues Deutschland

“A wonderful, colourful, breathlessly narrated historical panorama” Zeitpunkt

“Robert Merle is one of the very few French writers who has attained both popular success and the admiration of critics. The doyen of our novelists is a happy man” Le Figaro

Fortunes of France

CITY OF WISDOM AND BLOOD

ROBERT MERLE

Translated from the French by T. Jefferson Kline

PUSHKIN PRESS

LONDON

Contents

Title Page1234567891011121314About the AuthorAbout the PublisherCopyright

CITY OF WISDOM AND BLOOD

1

CERTAINLY, I WAS THRILLED to be galloping along on this beautiful June day with my gentle brother Samson and our valet Miroul, traversing the highways and byways of France, and yet I kept feeling sudden waves of regret at leaving the barony of Mespech behind. As I rode along, tears filled my eyes every time I thought of the great crenellated nest where I’d hatched and got my first feathers, protected from the upheavals of our times by its ramparts, of course, but even more so by the bravery of my father, my Uncle de Sauveterre and our soldiers, in accordance with the Périgordian proverb: “The only sure walls are good men.”

But it was no good crying. Now that we had reached the age of fifteen, with our heads full of Latin (vying for space in our brains with French and Provençal), our valour well tested in the la Lendrevie fighting, it was time to emerge from Barberine’s sweet coverlet, and to quit, as I liked to say, our swaddling clothes. As younger brothers (and as my beloved Samson was a bastard to boot) we had to take up our studies in Montpellier, where my father had decided to send us.

It was in this good city that my father himself had studied in the flower of his youth. He loved this place and he claimed that his college of medicine, where Rabelais had defended his thesis, surpassed all others, even Paris, by the audacity, the variety and the novelties of its teaching, whose brilliance, he claimed, outshone even that of the school of Salerno in the previous century.

But we had a long and perilous journey to go from Sarlat to Montpellier, especially for three Huguenots who couldn’t count fifty years among them yet had to travel in these times troubled by the recent wars, in which our people and the Catholics had so cruelly torn each other apart. To be sure, there reigned an uneasy peace between the two sides, but many grumblings and resentments could be heard. The uneasiness on our side had flared up again in 1565 during the Meeting of Bayonne, at which Catherine de’ Medici had secretly met with the Duque de Alba, and during which the queen was rumoured to have proposed a marriage between her daughter Margot and Don Juan of Spain in return for a Spanish attack on the French Protestants. But Felipe II had ultimately disdained this renewed attempt to ally the French throne with the royal blood of Spain. Worse still, the following year, the Rex Catholicissimus became so irritated with the French for having settled so close to his own possessions in the Americas that he forgot his Catholic precepts in his wrath and ordered a surprise attack on our Breton colonists in Florida, massacring the lot. This, of course, had so greatly angered Catherine de’ Medici that the Spaniard had lost much credit with the French court and no longer dared to exercise his papist zeal in the assassination of our Protestant leaders and the slaughter or exile of the masses of our brothers.

These bloody projects discarded, at least for the time being, Fortune seemed to smile once again on France. Peace seemed to be gaining some ground and the most rabid papists among the king’s subjects seemed momentarily to lose heart at Spain’s refusal to support them. The more moderate Catholics renewed their hope of reconciliation between the two faiths. Despite these more reassuring developments, we still had to contend, as we galloped across the French countryside, with the bands of rogues who, during the recent disorders of the civil war, had fled into the forests, setting up roadblocks at many crossroads and bridges to collect ransom from travellers and often, not content with mere robbery, inflicted the most horrible atrocities on their victims.

For our part, however, since we had learnt the arts of warfare from an early age—the last gulp of milk from Barberine’s fulsome breasts having barely passed our gullets—and since we were armed to the teeth, well helmeted, breastplates firmly attached, swords at our sides, daggers hanging from our belts, pistols emerging from the holsters in our saddles and our arquebuses prominently displayed on the packhorses Miroul was leading behind him, Samson and I felt we had little to fear from these villains. But Miroul, young though he was, had already suffered from the assaults of the highwaymen and reminded us, as my father had done, that our safety lay not in combat where there was nothing to be gained by victory if one of us were wounded, but in flight, where the greater speed of our horses guaranteed our advantage. This was weighty counsel, for Miroul’s prudence was hardly the result of cowardice. Slight of build, but agile to the point of being able to climb a wall like a fly, able to throw a pike with the speed and accuracy of a crossbow, he was worth three of the enemy all by himself. And don’t accuse me of Gascon exaggeration! I’m telling the plain truth, as events would soon prove.

As for the timing of our departure, we had set out for Montpellier unusually early, given that courses wouldn’t begin until mid October, but I well understood my father’s intentions in sending us off a month beforehand. He knew I needed time to recover from the profound melancholy I’d fallen into after the death of little Hélix, my milk sibling. After terrible suffering, she had gone to her last sleep in the arms of the Lord the month before, in the flower of her nineteenth year. I had felt the deepest friendship for her despite the modesty of her birth and the evident disapproval of my older brother, François, who had stayed behind, in the safety of our walls, waiting for his turn to become Baron de Mespech when the Creator should call my father into his arms. And wait he would, and for many years to come, thank God, for my father, though well past his fiftieth year, was still lively and vigorous enough to have carried off Franchou, the chambermaid of his late wife, a year previously. Swords in hand, he, Samson and I had fended off a crowd of bloodthirsty vagabonds in Sarlat, and escorted her out of that plague-infested city.

To be sure, I was a Huguenot, but less fervently than my brother, Samson, who’d been raised from birth in the reformed religion. My own mother had insisted on raising me according to Catholic doctrine. On her deathbed—despite my having been converted to the new beliefs at the age of ten under heavy pressure from my father—my mother had given me a medallion of the Virgin Mary and conjured me to wear it as long as I lived. Thus it was that, while professing the reformed religion, I faithfully bore around my neck the symbol of the Catholic faith.

Might that have been the reason that the sweet intimacies little Hélix had shared with me during our sweet nights together seemed much less sinful than they would have to my half-brother Samson, whose great beauty was matched only by his ferocious virtue? Of course, the irony of his puritanical ways was that he was conceived outside of marriage—my father’s Huguenot fervour not having deterred him from departing from the straight and narrow path, without, however, incurring the anger the Lord might have visited on the fruits of this sinful act, or, for that matter, on the sinner himself, since Mespech had continued to accumulate wealth and prosperity from the fruits of the Huguenot economy and agronomy practised there.

My father had advised us not to pass through the mountains to get to Montpellier since we would have been easily ambushed by the brigands there. He told us to take the road to Toulouse, after Cahors and Montauban, and then proceed through Carcassonne to Béziers, where the road cut through the plains and hence, though much longer, was also much safer because of the heavy traffic of horsemen and carts. However, at roughly the midpoint of our journey, as we arrived at the Two Angels inn on the outskirts of Toulouse, our hostess (a lively widow) informed us that just two weeks previously a merchants’ convoy had been pillaged and massacred between Carcassonne and Narbonne by a large band of men who were hiding out in the Corbières hills.

This unpleasant news gave us a lot to think about, and in the room at the Two Angels, where Samson and I were lodged (with Miroul in a small anteroom next to us) we discussed our situation, sitting in a circle, with Miroul slightly farther away, holding his viol, from which he drew, from time to time, some lugubrious sounds to accompany our distress. We simply didn’t know which saint, devil, incubus or succubus to invoke, not daring to continue our journey in the face of such imminent peril, and fearing to write of it to our father, whose answer would take at least two weeks to reach us.

“A fortnight at this inn!” cried Samson, shaking his handsome, copper-coloured locks. “’T’would be our financial ruin, a very blameable recreation and an invitation to sin.”

Whereupon Miroul, with a knowing look in my direction, plucked three notes on his viol to accentuate the triple danger that lurked in these quarters threatening our youthful innocence. Indeed, I was astonished that it hadn’t escaped our pure Samson’s notice that the buxom chambermaids who attended to our every need in this place were not the type to model their behaviour after the Two Angels who decorated the hotel’s sign—who themselves suggested less than heavenly virtues, being cut out of iron.

I was about to respond to Samson’s remark when, as Miroul plucked the third note on his viol, a huge tumult of horses’ hooves, curses and cries could be heard below in the rue de la Mazelerie. I rushed to the window (which we had to pull open in order to see since it was filled not with glass but with oil paper). Samson was at my heels, closely followed by Miroul, viol in hand, and, in the dusk outside, we glimpsed a group of about fifty men and women as they dismounted from their large, long-tailed bay horses. Their colourful and finely wrought clothes were covered with dust. Most of the women wore large-brimmed bonnets to protect them from the southern sun. Some of the men were armed with arquebuses, others with pistols or swords, and the ladies all carried daggers in their belts. They were of various ages and classes, most of them of considerable size and strength, golden-haired and blue-eyed, but a few others were of another type altogether: small of stature, dark-skinned and dark-haired, but all so happy to be dismounting and finding lodging in the inn that they shouted and babbled happily in an ear-splitting cacophony. In their relief to be setting foot to ground, they laughed uproariously, pushed each other, struck each other on the shoulders or on the arse and shouted boisterously at each other across the street while their huge mounts stood smoking with sweat, stamping their feet, shaking their blonde manes and whinnying so loudly for nourishment that they were like to break your eardrums. This crowd of horses and people made such an infernal row that you would have thought it was an army of rebellious peasants laying siege to the town hall.

All of the good Toulousain people were, like ourselves, at their windows, gaping, mute, eyes practically popping out of their heads, and ears wide open in astonishment, for the newcomers surprised us with a strange sort of jargon, in which French words (pronounced very differently from the sharp accent of Paris) were mixed with a dialect which no good mother’s son could have understood.

The troop finally began to flood into the inn, pushing and shoving tumultuously, while a group of valets ran out to grab their horses’ reins and lead them to the stables, buzzing with admiration for the size and power of these steeds. Beneath us, though we were lodged on the second floor of the Two Angels, the shouting continued with such brio that the walls shook with it. Someone knocked at our door, and, since Samson and I were busy watching the horses, I told Miroul to open it. Which he did, viol in hand, for it seemed he was never without it, even in bed.

There appeared—I noticed out of the corner of my eye, for I was still fixated on the herd of horses below us—the innkeeper herself, a lively brunette, all aflutter, beautifully dressed in a yellow petticoat with a bodice of the same colour, whose contents were so beautiful, so fulsome and so bouncy that it seemed a shame that she should expose them thus without some hope that they would be fondled.

“My pretty fellow,” said the innkeeper to Miroul, in her Toulousain drawl, “are you not the valet to these two handsome gentlemen from Périgord whom I spy lounging at the window?” “Indeed!” replied Miroul, plucking a welcoming chord on his viol.

“I am at their service, and consequently at yours as well, my good hostess!” Another chord from his viol eloquently accompanied the smile he lavished on her.

“By my soul,” cried the lady, laughing, “you’re a very pretty fellow, I see, and your music too! What do they call you?”

“Miroul! At your service!” said he, plucking anew his instrument and singing:

Miroul—each eye a different hue!

The right is brown, the left one blue.

At this my heart was pinched with grief, for this was how little Hélix greeted Miroul, during the few remissions from her long agony, when he arrived, viol in hand, to try to help her forget the flames of her suffering. But I quickly thrust this sad thought back into the satchel of my memories. From now on, I was determined to look forward and not back.

“Miroul!” laughed our hostess, batting an eyelash and sighing deeply. “I’m not sure I can trust these eyes! The blue eye may be a serious fellow, but that brown one is a rascal!” Their repartee was so lively that I wanted to put in my pennyworth, drawn as I was to this beautiful wench like a nail to a magnet.

“My good woman,” I said, turning round and stepping briskly forward, hands on hips, “whatever aid or service your exquisiteness might require of us, you shall surely have it, for we are all quite undone by your beauty!”

“Your words, good Monsieur,” she replied, “will be ever welcome—and the more so the more often you say them!”

“I shall repeat them as often as you wish, my hostess, at any hour of the day… or night!”

But our innkeeper, thinking no doubt that we had gone too quickly and too far from the very first word spoken, replied only by a quick curtsey that, to tell the truth, would have discountenanced the most austere of men, for she was obliged, upon rising, to rearrange her beautiful treasures in the sweet lodgings of her bodice.

“Monsieur,” she said with feigned distress, “let’s get down to business: fifty Norman pilgrims have just dismounted at our doorstep who are on their way to Rome under the holy guidance of a powerful baron and a dozen monks.”

“Yes, I believe we may have heard them!” I laughed.

“Alas!” she replied. “That’s not the worst of it! To lodge them I’ll have to put four in a bed, and in this bed,” she said, pointing to ours, “there are but two of you. Monsieur, would you be willing to accommodate two more companions for the night?”

“Men or women?” I smiled.

“Men,” broke in Samson with a furrowed brow as he turned from the window.

The innkeeper thought about this for a long moment as she gazed on his manly figure standing before her in all the vigorous symmetry of his youth. She then sighed deeply, for though she believed herself in the presence of one of God’s angels, she sensed how little she might profit from such a one and how much she preferred the hot-blooded version.

“Men, then,” she sighed with a kind of whole-body shudder that convinced me that she would have gladly given up her own bed to the pilgrims to join us in ours.

“Men and no monkth,” added Samson with his charming lisp, yet maintaining his serious demeanour.

At this, our hostess became very animated and reddened visibly: “By St Joseph and all the saints!” she cried. “Would you be the kind of pestiferous heretics and agents of the Devil who cannot abide the presence of men of God?”

“Heavens no, my good hostess!” I hastened to reply, knowing how thoroughly, since the victory of Montluc, the Huguenots were reviled and hounded by the people of Toulouse. “My brother meant nothing of the sort! He’s only afraid that your monks will be too corpulent and take up too much space in our bed!”

“Sweet Jesus!” she sighed, and was once again all smiles. “Are you so hostile to the rotund?”

“Not in the least!” I rejoined, extending both hands in her direction. “There are some rotundities that are so pleasing to the eye that we’d like to help their owner bear their delicious weight!”

“Enough of that!” she countered, rapping my knuckles and feigning a frown. “These are for display only, not for common usage!” At this, Miroul plucked his viol two or three times in ironic echo, and our hostess laughed wholeheartedly, glancing conspiratorially at each of us in turn.

“If this cackling is quite finished,” growled Samson impatiently, “I’d like to get to bed.”

“Well, go right ahead!” our innkeeper replied. “You won’t bother me in the least! And if the truth be known, I wouldn’t mind seeing you all just as the Lord made you!”

“Shame on you, lady!” said Samson, blushing and turning his back.

“Easy there!” she exclaimed. “You gentlemen are a strange lot! One’s too hot, the other’s too cold and the valet’s got brown and blue eyes! But now I have another request to make,” she continued, calming considerably. “Monsieur, this morning I heard you talking with your brother in a jargon that little resembled the French of France.”

“What? You don’t understand it?” I replied.

“We speak only Provençal here,” said the landlady, “just like you, Monsieur, only with a different accent and some different expressions. You should know that there isn’t a single kid in the rue de la Mazelerie that understands French or who can read or write it. But,” she said, drawing herself up, “I know my figures!”

“Well, you’ve never wanted for a figure, my good hostess!” I laughed. “But, good woman, tell me straight out if I can help you figure out this Norman baron’s language.”

“How did you guess?” she confessed.

“I’ll follow you downstairs,” said I, and, pushing our buxom hostess out the door, closed it behind us, happy to escape Samson’s reproving stare.

Following our innkeeper, I found myself in a dark, winding staircase.

“This powerful baron,” whispered my hostess, “is named Caudebec… By the Virgin, my noble guest, stop your kneading! Am I but a lump of bread dough that you press me so?”

“Am I to blame,” I countered, “if your staircase is as dark as a black cow in a burnt-out forest? I’ve got to hold on to something!”

“Fie! By St Joseph, grab on somewhere else! Now I really do believe you’re a good Christian and not one of those wicked heretics who want to forbid us to dance and play and celebrate saints’ days as we ought! The plague take those cold cocks!”

“What did you say this Norman’s name was?” I said, not wishing to reply and instead lavishing kisses on her neck and bodice.

“Caudebec. Remember this name well: Caudebec. This gentleman is so high and mighty he doesn’t want anyone to know who he is.”

“Caudebec,” I repeated. “Like hotmouth,” I added, to help myself remember the name.

“Hotmouth yourself!” she laughed, trying to twist out of my grasp. “By all the saints, your lips and your mouth are everywhere! Your kisses will be the death of me! You’re making me crazier than a cat! Enough, I beg you! I’ve work to do in the kitchens for all of these pious pilgrims!”

But since I couldn’t be bothered to obey her, she pushed me so hard that I lost my footing and dragged her down with me. We fell with a great clatter on the bottom wooden steps and, since at that very moment the priest had finished his benediction in the dining hall on the other side of the door, a great silence had fallen over the group of pilgrims gathered there for their dinner. All of the hungry travellers there assembled were thus pretending to be piously awaiting the priest’s “Amen” to signal a happy end to his Latin formalities so that they could set to the meal they were so desirous of devouring. Into this pious silence there now resounded the fracas of our calamitous but happy fall as we rolled one on top of the other out of our stairwell, or, more precisely, I rolled on top of our hostess—a huge advantage from my perspective, since she was so wondrously well padded. Seeing which, the Norman pilgrims, being a very joyous and boisterous crowd, all burst out laughing like a swarm of flies.

“Silence!” shouted the Baron de Caudebec from the head of the table, his voice resounding like thunder, echoed by the violent clap of his hand on the oak surface. “Have you no shame? Your laughter at this wench’s head-over-heels arrival has interrupted our holy father’s prayers! ’Sblood! Is this the way devout pilgrims should behave on their way to Rome? Are you more crass than those mountebanks in Paris? Silence, I say! The first one who dares open his mouth before the prayer has ended will have his head smashed to pieces.”

The silence that followed was deafening. Whereupon the baron said, “You may continue, Father.”

“But… I’ve finished,” said the monk.

“Amen!” cried the Baron de Caudebec, and all the assembled men and women echoed his “Amen!” in a shout that shook the entire house. After which the assembled guests fell upon their meal like wolves on their kill, hardily devouring the Bayonne ham, fresh trout, roast pheasant, truffle omelettes, Bigorre sausages, and the many other specialities for which the Two Angels inn was famous throughout the Toulousain region. And while they put their jaws to work on these delights, a dozen brunette chambermaids, whom I’ve already described as comely, curvaceous, amply endowed and hardly stand-offish, ran from one guest to the next, pouring streams of our excellent Guyenne wines into their avid goblets.

“Well then!” said the innkeeper as she rose to her feet and adjusted her bodice. “Well then!” she repeated happily as she surveyed the tables where a legion of sharp teeth and dry throats were having their way.

“Tomorrow we’ll write very fat figures on your slate, my good woman,” I laughed as I dusted myself off.

“Shush, Monsieur!” she cautioned, pressing her mouth to my ear—quite unnecessarily since none of our guests spoke Provençal. “These Normans are very well appointed. Did you see the gold bracelets on these grand ladies? But, my friend, we can’t linger here. I’ve got work to do in the kitchen. You must do as we agreed. For my part,” she continued with a slight wink, her exquisite hand pressing my arm, “I’ll find some way to catch up with you in some corner or other of my house today or tonight and will always be, my friend, humbly at your service.” This said, she made a deep bow, but this time keeping her hand firmly on her bodice to prevent any repetition of the contents’ escape in front of such a pious assembly.

“Monsieur!” cried the Baron de Caudebec, pointing a leg of guineafowl at me, his blue eyes blazing from a face already reddened by Guyenne wine. “Who do you think you are, disturbing our prayers? If you weren’t so young, I’d take you in there and run my rapier through your liver!”

“Baron de Caudebec,” I replied in my best Parisian French, as I bowed—but not very deeply, “please, I beg you, spare my liver, though I assure you I doubt it is the seat of reason as the ancient Babylonian doctors believed. My name is Pierre de Siorac. I’m the younger son of the Baron de Mespech, in Périgord, and I’m travelling to Montpellier to study medicine. I’ve come to offer my services as your interpreter since I speak Provençal.”

“Well met!” cried Caudebec, raising his drumstick heavenward. “The saints in Paradise have sent you! Page, a stool for this gentleman! Next to me, here! You’ve saved me, my friend! I’m more lost in these provinces than a Christian in Arabia! These bumpkins don’t understand my language!”

I stepped towards him and, as I drew near, the baron did me the honour of standing to greet me and gave me hardy pats on the shoulder and back which, in all honesty, I would happily have forgone, so powerful were his big hands. For big he was in all respects—bull-necked, broad-shouldered and barrel-chested. He was blonde-haired with a luxuriant drooping moustache that was carefully tapered. His blue eyes, as I’ve mentioned, leapt out at you from a ruddy complexion. He was elegantly clothed, though his doublet was somewhat soiled since he ate like a Turk, throwing his chewed bones over his shoulder. He wiped his hands on the serving girls’ skirts when they came within range, and they daren’t ever complain, given his wont of frowning and scolding at the least inconvenience, threatening to turn the poor wench’s breasts into ribbons if she made the least objection. He spoke to them in French so that they understood not a word, but his angry look and grimaces told them all they needed to know. When he’d managed to remove all the grease from his fingers and moustache, the baron never tired of groping the backsides of these maidens, proving he was as lusty as he was devout—a trait I was able to observe at my leisure for the next two weeks, as you will hear.

“My friend!” he cried, after his welcoming blows. “Your doublet is covered with dust from your fall. Here, page! Take this gentleman’s doublet and brush it!… Page! ’Sblood! The rascal is asleep again! By Christ, I’ll disembowel him!”

In truth, he settled for a slap, which the miscreant dodged, but squealed nonetheless like a stuck pig. Then, throwing himself at me, he pulled off my doublet in a flash and disappeared with it, for far from asleep, the rogue was as lively as mercury, a liar, braggart, trickster and insolent lad with a saucy tongue—when he was out of his master’s earshot. It was, moreover, a marvel to watch him as he stood behind his master’s chair, catching half-eaten drumsticks on the fly as the baron threw them over his shoulder—not that this was his only provender. He regularly rifled the satchels of the pilgrims, extracting their prized possessions as soon as their heads were turned. This page was called Rouen, after the city where he was born, and although it was an odd cognomen for a Christian, I never heard him called by any other name. He had green eyes and a forest of red hair sticking straight up from the top of his head that no brush or comb could ever have tamed.

But I must go on with my story. My doublet removed, I sat down in shirtsleeves on the stool between the baron and a stocky monk whose massive dark eyebrows seemed to cut his face in two. This good apostle ate at some remove from the table out of respect for the enormous belly that protruded beneath his chest.

“Monsieur de Siorac,” the baron began as he stuffed a huge Bigorre sausage into his maw, “this monk here is Brother Antoine”—the phrase, barely recognizable through the bits of sausage filling his mouth, having become, “This bonk is brover anwan.” But then, the sausage having been sufficiently chewed, he emptied his goblet in a single swig to dilute it and continued, “Brother Antoine is entirely in charge of my finances. He’s a very learned man. He has the authority to take confession and so I’ve assigned him the spiritual governance of our good pilgrims.”

Brother Antoine gave me a friendly nod, but I couldn’t help feeling penetrated by his little black eyes as he arched his thick eyebrows. “Aha,” I thought, “I’d better be careful with this brother! I wonder if he’s sniffed out my Huguenot leanings: I’ll be on my guard.”

“This wine is not so bad!” cried the baron as he seized another sausage in his great paw rather than picking it up delicately between thumb and index finger, as Barberine, ever attentive to good table manners, had taught me to do.

Having stuffed his entire prey into his mouth, the baron continued: “I must tell you, Monsieur de Siorac, that the reason I’ve undertaken this pilgrimage is that my wife is languishing, alas, with a slow but unrelenting fever that has sequestered her in Caudebec castle. And you must have guessed, my friend, that I’m on my way to Rome to ask our Holy Father the Pope to pray to the Virgin Mary to intercede with her Divine Son on her behalf.”

“What idolatry!” I thought. “And so many intercessors: the Pope! Mary! Why not just pray directly to God—or through the mediation of His only Son, as it is written in the Gospels?” But as I suddenly felt the burning eyes of Brother Antoine on me, I remained silent, and put on my most contrite air.

“Monsieur de Siorac,” Brother Antoine said in his most innocent tones, aren’t you worried that in going to Montpellier to study medicine you will find yourself in a place where heretics are in control and swarm like a wasp’s nest?”

“Ah, but a good Christian fears not the Devil!” I smiled.

“Ha! Nicely said!” broke in the baron. “Hey, wench! Bring us more wine!”

But the chambermaid he’d shouted to turned a deaf ear and I certainly understood why.

“Monsieur my interpreter,” the baron said, turning to me, “this wench is definitely more to my taste than all the others, as I will prove to her tonight. So tell her to bring me wine and not to tarry or I’ll cut her breasts to ribbons.”

“I’ll go and tell her,” I said as I rose from the table, very content to escape from Brother Antoine’s evil eye, but even more so to have to bring a message to such a comely strumpet. I headed for my trollop and to put her at ease I approached her and put my hands on her hips and gave her a big smile. “My friend,” I said, “best that you don’t put our noble friend on edge. He’s calling for some of your wine.”

“Problem is,” she replied in her Toulousain dialect, “I don’t want the pig to dirty my petticoats and skirts with his greasy paws the way he did to Madeleine.”

“So what’s your name, my girl?” I asked, smiling almost in spite of myself at the captivating twinkle that lit up her black eyes.

“Franchou, Monsieur,” she replied, bowing politely yet managing to balance her pitcher without spilling a drop. More than the beauty of this tableau I was struck by her name: Franchou was the name of the chambermaid my father had liberated at sword-point from the plague-infested town of la Lendrevie!

“Franchou,” I said, “if you don’t obey the baron, he says he’ll cut your breasts to ribbons.”

“Sweet Jesus!” cried Franchou with a fearful expression that delighted me. “So that’s what he’s muttering in his bastard French! Holy Mother of God, would he really do it?”

“I don’t know. He’s a man of little patience. Go then, Franchou! I’ll ask our hostess to compensate you for the damage to your skirts.”

“Many thanks, my noble Monsieur!” she curtseyed with a winning smile.

Sadly the lass didn’t manage to escape the baron’s messy ways. Hardly had she served him when he ruined her skirt with his greasy fingers, and then, adding injury to insult, began pawing her.

“Ha ha!” shouted the baron as he burst into a belly laugh. “It seems, Monsieur Translator, that while pretending to represent me, you managed to do all right for yourself! This wench only has eyes for you, despite my caresses!”

“What’s this big animal talking about now?” asked Franchou in Toulousain.

“He thinks you have a crush on me.”

“Well, it’s true,” replied Franchou candidly.

“Monsieur de Siorac,” Brother Antoine broke in, “you have a pretty chain around your neck! Might we see your pendant?” I pulled the medallion from beneath my shirts and showed it to him.

“Well!” he cooed, making the sign of the cross. “The Virgin Mary! Blessed be the Holy Mother of God! And who, if I may ask, gave you this beautiful relic?”

“My mother,” said I quite simply.

“So your mother must be a person of great lineage, as the medallion is of pure gold, beautifully worked and, I would estimate, very old.”

“No,” I answered promptly, “our line is but recently begun. My father was knighted on the battlefield of Ceresole and named baron after our victory at Calais.”

I was telling the truth but not the whole truth, just as my father had done with the monk after the fighting at la Lendrevie. For if my father, a commoner, had been ennobled, just as I reported it, my mother, as Brother Antoine suspected, could claim to be from a great and ancient family, a descendant of a Castelnau who had fought in the Crusades. I couldn’t reveal her birthright to Brother Antoine, however, without also revealing that this family was well known to have supported the reformed religion in Périgord, Quercy and Agenais.

“I owe you a bit of an apology, my son,” Brother Antoine crooned, leaning towards me with a compassionate glance. “I had my suspicions about you after seeing your black doublet—such unusual apparel for a young gentleman—believing you to be one of those pestiferous heretics who insinuate themselves into our company to corrupt our faith. But your worldly manner and this holy medallion have persuaded me I was wrong.”

“My good interpreter a heretic?” cried Caudebec. “You’re dreaming, monk!”

Thereupon, to dismiss her, the baron applied an altogether too forceful slap to Franchou’s backside, seized a trout and crammed it, head, tail, bones and all, into his gullet. Franchou fled, her hand on her arse, whimpering and sobbing in pain and, truth be told, a few hours later, I could still see that her flesh was red and sore from the violence of his spanking and have never forgiven him for this revolting behaviour.

“My son,” Brother Antoine resumed, his beady eyes fastened on the movements of the chambermaids who were serving us, “it benefits us not at all to attempt to hide from Our Lord, who is all-seeing and all-knowing, that we are but fashioned of fragile clay and that all flesh is piteously weak and that the demon beckons us from every petticoat that moves and breathes before us” (but saying this he turned not his eyes from the fetching demoiselles who moved among us—quite the contrary!) “and that this inn is all too inviting” (at this he sighed languorously), “that we eat too well, and drink too much and that these lively wenches—may God prove me wrong!—are accustomed to play the saddle to all comers.”

He sighed again. “Tomorrow, my son”—and here he turned to face me, his eyebrows knitted in concern, and pierced me suddenly with his little black eyes—“I will hear your confession.”

Oh, the treacherous scoundrel! He was trying to catch me out! His suspicions had not abated, as he had claimed, the hypocrite! He still doubted my word, and, knowing how much the Huguenots abhorred auricular confession, he had decided to set a trap for me.

“My dear Brother Antoine,” I replied, displaying the most innocent expression I could manage, despite my animosity, “I cannot yet tell whether my night will be free of sin or not, but count on me to call on your good offices to wash me of my sins.”

What a strange method, I thought to myself. They sin, they confess, they start all over again. But I had nary a chance to pursue this line of thought. The Baron de Caudebec suddenly gave a great shout, and, grasping at his throat, rose straight up from his chair, crying that he was dying from an enormous fish bone that was stuck in his windpipe, and that someone must straightaway go to find a barber. “Now, ’sblood! Right away! God’s passion!” If not, he’d kill everyone in this house of the Devil: cook, kitchen boys, sauciers, serving girls and even the innkeeper herself!

Jumping to my feet, I urged him to remain calm. I managed to convince him that, since it was Sunday, the time it would take to get a barber here would mean hours of suffering, but that if he would take his seat, open his mouth, and show a bit of resolve, I would do what I could. Amazingly, he consented to my request. I had an oil lamp brought so that I could look into his mouth—a cavernous stink hole that I’ll never forget—and could see that there was indeed a fish bone stuck in his throat just beyond his uvula. I quickly whittled two wooden sticks into long spatulas, and using them together as a pincer, succeeded in extracting the tiny cause of this great calamity.

Caudebec could hardly believe his senses when, after consuming an entire pitcher of wine, he realized he no longer felt the pain in his gullet.

“’Sblood!” he cried, leaping to his feet. “It’s a miracle! Thanks be to the Holy Virgin Mary! And you,” he continued, bestowing on me such a powerful embrace that I thought he would suffocate me, “you, my learned young friend, I will henceforth call you my true son, for my son by blood, compared with you, is nothing but a nincompoop who doesn’t know his right hand from his left, who can hardly read, writes worse than I do, and thinks only of fox hunting and drinking and feasting, oppressing his labourers and bedding his serving girls. The plague take this ignoramus! He would have let his father die in agony. Monsieur de Siorac! The Virgin and all the saints brought you to me. God set you on this stool to save a poor sinner! My little interpreter, my gracious cousin, my eternal and immutable friend, what can I offer you in return for the immense gift you have bestowed on the barony of Caudebec? Ask and it shall be yours!”

And, just to prove that a Norman baron can bluster every bit as well as a man of the langue d’oc, he continued: “Speak up! What would you like? My purse? My horse? My daughter?”

“Hold, Monsieur! Your daughter for a fish bone?”

“My daughter? But I don’t have a daughter!” he cried, laughing as much at himself as at me in his Norman way, which was less heavy-handed than simply boorish.

“Well, Monsieur,” I replied, “since we’re talking about girls…” and I leant forward and whispered a few words in his enormous ear.

“You scoundrel!” he laughed. “You lewd fellow! So that’s what you want! But it’s little enough. Though,” he continued as if reconsidering, “I was thinking of having the hussy myself… But, so be it!” he went on with an air of immense generosity. “I’ll leave her to you, my friend, since such is your pleasure.” He seemed quite relieved, I thought, to have got off so cheaply—gifts not being his strong point, as I had already guessed.

At this point the page returned with my doublet, which I donned before taking my leave of the Baron de Caudebec, Brother Antoine and their pious assembly, who were but halfway done with their festivities, judging by the way they fell on the meats that were arriving periodically from the kitchens. As I started up the staircase, however, I paused to call the page.

“Hey, Rouen! Come over here!”

“At your service, Monsieur,” he said, his green eyes averted in a way that suggested he was at bit uneasy.

“Rouen, you owe me four sols for cleaning my doublet.”

“Four sols, Monsieur?”

“Exactly. They were in my pocket.”

“Well then, they must have fallen out!” he retorted, lowering his eyes as if to search for them.

“Just what I was thinking. They must have fallen from my pocket into yours.”

“Nay, Monsieur!” he countered—but without raising his voice. “As I am an honest lad!”

“For shame, Rouen, you swear so easily? What if I discussed my problem with your master?”

“He would whip me like green rye.”

“So, to avoid this unpleasantness, Rouen, let’s make a little deal. If by chance you find these four sols on the floor, they’ll be yours by finder’s rights. And if you hear Brother Antoine talking about me to the baron, you’ll repeat every word.”

“It’s a deal! I’ll shake on that, my master!” cried Rouen, smiling from ear to ear. I smiled back at him and, placing my hand on his head, gave his pointy red hair a rub that would have mussed it had it ever been combed.

After this I returned to my room, delighted with the way I’d fooled Brother Antoine, having behaved in every respect the way my father would have done, for my father always said that we owe the truth only to our friends and to our enemies ruses and guile, often comparing our Huguenots to the Israelites in the Bible as an oppressed people living among the Gentiles.

My beloved Samson had neither disrobed nor gone to bed, fearing the arrival of the two foreigners whom the innkeeper had assigned to our quarters. My own thought—which I was careful not to share with him since he was so innocent—was that he would have done better not to insist on male bedfellows since he was so handsome that he might have attracted the attentions of someone so inclined, should such a one be among our new neighbours.

I discovered Samson in deep reverie, sitting, spiteful and taciturn, on his stool, quite distressed by my long absence. Miroul was sitting opposite, not daring to open his mouth and content from time to time to play a few chords on his viol to console his master and, of course, for the pure pleasure of the music.

Samson became very upset when I had explained my plan that we should join company with these Norman pilgrims as far as Montpellier because they were so large and heavily armed a group that no bandits would dare cross swords with them.

“What?” he wailed. “Make common cause with these papists? Wear a mask? Hear Mass with them? Maybe even go to confession?”

I rose to my full height, hands on hips. “My dear brother,” I answered coolly, “you’ve no right to scold me.”

He was so shaken by my tone that tears came to his eyes. Such was the great love that, like a stream of red blood, flowed from one to the other. For my part, I couldn’t bear that he should suffer the least bit on my account, and in a burst of feeling I ran to him, hugged him to me and kissed him on both cheeks. Seeing this, Miroul plucked on his viol.

“Samson,” I explained, sitting him down beside me, “remember my father’s wisdom in assigning you the management of our purse, and me the leadership of our little band—on condition I listen to Miroul, who, better than anyone, knows the ways of the vandals on the highways.”

At this, Miroul, far from plucking his viol, lowered his head sadly, for he had watched his entire family have their throats cut by a band of these brigands on a highway south of Sarlat and would have suffered the same fate had he not had the presence of mind to bury himself in the hay in the barn.

“But still,” argued Samson, “how can we break bread with these bloodthirsty papists who have sent so many of our people to the scaffold?”

“Bloodthirsty they were,” I concurred, “and might become so again. But for the moment, peace has been declared between our two religions. Besides, these Normans are well-meaning folk despite their idolatry. Let me try to work this out, gentle brother.”

“The problem is,” said Samson, opening his big azure eyes and looking at me with such an honest demeanour that my heart swelled with affection for him, “I can’t feign anything and you know it!”

“I do know it,” I agreed, putting my arm around his shoulder, “so I’ll have to pretend for both of us. As for you, Samson, all you have to do is remain mute as though you had been laid low with a terrible fever. Miroul will watch over you, and answer any questions they ask by plucking his viol. How say you, Miroul?”

“I find I think that you’re right, my master,” he replied. “There is certainly less danger for us among these papists than reduced to our own resources on the highways.”

“But what will happen if we’re found out?” Samson persisted.

“Nothing, I’d wager. The baron is a crude but not a cruel man.”

A knock on the door interrupted our discussion and Miroul went to open it and found Franchou on our threshold, holding a heavy tray. “My mistress,” said Franchou, her shining eyes locking on mine as she entered, “didn’t know where to put you since our dining hall is entirely occupied by that crowd of pilgrims from the north.”

“But this will do quite handsomely!” I answered. In helping Franchou bring in and lay the tray on a small table near the window, I managed to keep my back to Samson, although with the daylight waning and the oil paper letting in but little light this position was less an advantage for supping than for the exchange of looks we passed between us.

“Wench,” I said, not wanting to name her in front of my brother, “I’m going to hurry my supper. As soon as you have finished your day’s work, come and tell me whether the Baron de Caudebec needs my interpreting.”

She understood my meaning, and her brilliant, lively black eyes told me quite clearly it was so. “At your service, my noble lord,” she replied, bowing low—though her look was much less subservient than her curtsey.

The meats were succulent, but though I ate with a hearty appetite, my thoughts were elsewhere: I was listening to the sounds in the corridor outside, where I could hear the heavy and stumbling footfalls of the pilgrims heading for bed. Which my gentle brother did as well as soon as he’d downed his goblet of wine, perching, fully clothed, on the extreme edge of the bed in order to leave room for our guests.

“Miroul,” I whispered, “when our bedfellows arrive—and let’s pray they’re neither too broad-shouldered or two pot-bellied—tell them to be quiet so as not to wake Samson.”

“I’ll take care of it, Monsieur,” said Miroul, and I have no idea how he managed it, but at times when he was kidding, and didn’t want to say or show it openly, his blue eye remained cold while his brown eye sparkled.

Someone scratched like a mouse at the door, and, without waiting for an answer, opened it. “Monsieur,” said Franchou, her beautiful round cheeks aglow as she lied, “the baron is calling for you to interpret for him!”

I leapt to my feet and hissed to Miroul, “I’m off! Take good care of my brother!”

“I wish you a happy translation tonight, Monsieur,” replied Miroul, as serious as a bishop on his cathedra, plucking two chords on his sweet viol.

It was a different tune altogether the next morning, when, at the break of day, I hauled up water from the well in the courtyard to begin my ablutions—a habit or a folly, I know not which, that I got from my father, who, in his early years as a student of medicine in Montpellier, and a zealous disciple of Hippocrates, claimed that water and our bodies have a natural affinity, the first helping the second to maintain its health. It would be a great thing, if you’ll permit me to argue my father’s case, if the use of this liquid element were more widespread in this century—and in this kingdom—than it in fact is, even among the nobility. For I saw in my twenties, while at the court of Charles IX, many well-to-do and pretty women spend an infinite amount of time primping, but bathing? Not in the least. And isn’t it a great pity that these feminine bodies, so suave and polished, remain, hidden beneath the silks and finery, as dirty as a day-labourer, who at least has the excuse of working the soil from dawn to dusk? Alas, how put off we are when we have sensitive noses and quickly detect the filth beneath the perfumes that these beauties spray on themselves!

At Mespech, my older brother François scorned my domestic dalliances, but I don’t share his opinions on this matter. As for me, I prefer to say, “Long live Franchou, if Franchou bathes in pure water!” And the hell with the princess with her royal blood (whom I will not name) who dared to boast at court of never having washed her hands in a week! And it wasn’t just her hands! I leave you to imagine the rest.

So I was spraying myself with cold water, however heretical such toiletries may have been—and may my sins be washed away by the Lord’s grace as quickly on Judgement Day as the sweat and humours of the previous night—when who should appear in her yellow bodice, doing her best to negotiate the uneven paving stones of the courtyard, but our beautiful hostess. Her aspect was clearly not the least bit welcoming; quite the contrary, she looked very unhappy and spiteful, her eyebrows in a deep furrow, her eyes piercing me like daggers.

“Hallo!” she said with some bitterness, her hands on her hips. “Here’s our handsome stallion all busy with grooming himself after his night’s gallop!”

And, since I couldn’t manage to say a word, so embarrassed was I, she added scornfully, “Your hocks seem to me to be sagging a bit.”

“Not in the least!” I replied, stung and rising to my feet. “I’m always at your service, my good woman!”

“Ha! You scoundrel!” she cried. “Not a bit of it! You turned a cold shoulder last night to my feed and were whinnying after other oats!”

I decided to opt for bravado since repentance was out of the question. “My sweet hostess, to tell you the truth, I was intending to take my feed in two different mangers. Scarcely, however, was I set up comfortably at one than they slipped my halter on.”

“If this halter, was, as I believe, two feeble arms, you could easily have broken free! You’re a sweet talker but I no longer trust your palaver. You start out on one horse and end with another.”

“But, my good woman,” I protested, “the Two Angels inn is on the way to Montpellier and also on the way back to my home in the Sarlat region. We’ll have many chances to see each other again.”

“Enough of these empty promises! I don’t eat reheated meat,” she snarled, now wholly irritated with me. And, turning on her heels, she threw over her shoulder, “Can you imagine the conceited fop who’d believe I’d wait for him?”

The words “conceited fop” really stung, though I had to admit that my Gascon jokes about the two mangers deserved no less.

“Well then,” I replied stiffly, “since there can be no more question of friendship between us, please prepare my bill of fare so I can be on my way.”

“I’ve already added up your bill,” she said, spinning around to face me with an air of vengeful triumph that set me to thinking. “Three meals at eight sols each, that’s twenty-four sols. Six sols for the room since you had to share the bed. Twelve sols for your four horses. Plus eighteen sols for the wench you enjoyed last night.”

I looked at her, speechless. Sweat suddenly started to trickle down my back at the idea I’d have to explain this last exorbitant expense to Samson, who had the entire responsibility for disbursements from our small treasury.

“What?” I gasped. “Pay for favours that were freely offered?”

“Depends on who offers them,” she countered.

“’Sblood! as our baron would say! I’m supposed to cough up for a wench who’s completely mad about me?”

“You misunderstand, Monsieur,” replied my hostess, colder than a nun’s feet on a chapel floor. “You’re not paying for the wench, you’re charged for having reserved her services for an entire night, to my great detriment, since she was unavailable for more general services.”

“Where am I then?” I cried, standing to my full height. “In a brothel?”

“Absolutely not!” said my hostess, assuming her most authoritative posture. “You’re a guest in a good, respectable, Christian establishment where all of our travellers’ needs are fully attended to.”

“Their Christian needs!” I laughed.

But I fell silent with the awful realization of just how bad this sounded, coming from me. Moreover, the innkeeper maintained such a stony glare that I had not the heart to continue in this vein. So I decided to adopt a completely different approach, and spoke in more honeyed tones, but this was no less in vain. She was not to be swayed in the least, and, ultimately, I realized that to soothe her I’d have to take an entirely different tack.

The how and what of this arrangement I will leave entirely to the reader’s imagination, begging him not to judge me too severely for being a fledgling so recently cast out of his nest in Mespech that I couldn’t help getting tied up in the skirts of both of these beauties. It’s really not in my nature to be so irresponsible. And, in the end, it was the thought of offending my dear Samson, both in his morals and in the management of our purse, that led me to the course of action I chose.

Not that I mean to complain. It wasn’t, after all, such a great sacrifice, despite my initial reluctance. To tell the truth, my hostess, even after the fatigue and stress of her evening, was well worth the bedding. My gods, what a furnace! And I can reminisce on our time together with some pride at being the bellows that set that fire burning. “Oh, what a pity,” I mused as I crept back into our room (where Samson was still asleep, in the company of two fat monks), “that these delights, so healthy for our bodies and our spirits, should be, when enjoyed outside of marriage, such guilty pleasures in the eyes of God.” But, alas, such is the way all of this is taught us. And it must be true since both of the religions of our country—both Catholic and reformed—are so fully in agreement on this matter.

2

IDIDN’T WANT TO RISK waking Samson with those two fat monks taking up so much space in the bed, so I slipped into the small adjoining chamber and, as Miroul was already out tending to our horses, I fell into his bed as the first light of dawn began to tinge the oil paper of his window.

When all our other voluptuous desires have been exhausted, there is always sleep, which is not the least among them. What a delight to find myself alone and able to stretch out full length on this little couch, my body so weary, arms and legs akimbo and eyes closing as soon as my head touched the blankets.

Samson was amazed to discover me so completely dead to the world when he decided to awaken me at noon—I who, at Mespech, was the first to rise and always the first downstairs in the great kitchens, arriving even before la Maligou had set the water on to boil. I explained as best I could, as I ran my fingers through my dishevelled hair, how exhausted I’d become doing all the interpreting the night before, but felt a bit ashamed at this lie since he immediately set about trying to comfort me. Oh, Samson you are such a guardian angel, but, thankfully, not so good a guardian, luckily for my sins!

For his part, Caudebec got softer by the minute in this inn whose two angels hid two devils, whose names were, respectively “good victuals” and “sweet wench”. The night before he’d informed me