Heretic Dawn (15 page)

“Ha!” snorted Little Sissy. “If it were just Madame Angelina, who, being a virgin and all, you must respect, but there are all those Parisian harlots, so expert in their wiles and so rigged out that they’ll have you jumping about them like a cat on hot bricks every day you’re there!”

“Then I know a lot of Parisian girls in Périgord!” I laughed, and, pulling her to me, with cuirass and helmet already on, I said, “Come, Little Sissy, give me a kiss, my pretty! One last kiss for the road! Be a good girl, and polite, and work hard while I’m gone! Get up early! Don’t lie around in the sheets! Don’t run from difficulty! And don’t argue with Alazaïs or with Barberine, who is so good to you!”

“Oh, my Pierre!” she cried, throwing her bare arms around my neck. “May it please God to have made me pregnant in the last week, so that I can laze about in bed and eat as much as I want and do nothing but dream about you, ’cause I hate housework and want only your love and to care for the baby I’ll give you! Oh!” she said, pulling me close despite my rude chain mail. “I’m so proud to be your wench, and will be prouder to make you a little Siorac baby. That’s the work I want, Pierre, and none other!”

“Little Sissy, my pretty, a kiss!” I said, keeping back my tears. “Another kiss! And be a good girl, behave! And if you do I’ll bring you back something pretty from Paris!”

“Really? What?” she cried, her beautiful black Gypsy eyes lighting up, her hands pressed tightly as if in prayer.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I smiled, heading for the door, “maybe a ring, or a lace kerchief or a silk ribbon…”

“A ring!” she cried. “It’s a ring I want! A gold ring not a silver one, so it’ll look pretty on my brown skin!”

“A gold one then,” I said, caught up in her pleasure, “on condition you don’t argue with Alazaïs and that you do her bidding.”

“I promise, Pierre!” she cried as I opened the door. “And may God watch over you!”

“Well, Monsieur,” smiled Miroul, who was carrying my arms as we traversed the corridors of Mespech, “now you’re in debt for a ring when you could have got off with a ribbon! The wench won that hand and handily so!”

And even though he said this as a joke, I could see that there was a barb to his words, and feeling this prick I replied:

“It’s all right, Miroul, a master should be generous: didn’t I buy you a new outfit in Montpellier?”

“I thank the Lord and I thank you, Monsieur,
and
Madame de Joyeuse… But as for her, she’s not going to be in Paris to fatten your purse, so you’d better think about that.”

“It’s all right, I tell you, Miroul—Samson will think for both of us!”

“But this ring, Monsieur! And gold! We’ve scarcely left and we’re already ruined! And for a wench who serves so poorly at Mespech.”

“Yet she serves me well enough! And when you come right down to it, she’s bewitched me!”

“Ah, Monsieur! Who doesn’t bewitch you! You’re made of such tender stuff when it comes to a petticoat.”

“A frailty I inherited from you-know-who.”

“Who, I’m sure, would never have promised a gold ring to a chambermaid who doesn’t do two sols’ worth of work in an entire year!”

“All right, Miroul, that’s enough of that refrain! You’ll get me really angry if you continue with it.”

And, in truth, I was already angry, but at myself, and, although I wasn’t going to show it, my Huguenot conscience was sorely pricking me for having played at being a rich grandee with Little Sissy.

Down in our great hall, my father was sitting alone, waiting for me and devouring a beautiful white bread, some ham and a bowl of milk. He looked serene, though I thought I detected some melancholy in his expression. After having gestured to me to have a seat and enjoy my breakfast, he rose and began pacing back and forth, his boots
ringing on the stone floor; however, when I was in the midst of my meal, he cried, quite angrily and in stentorian tones:

“A week! I waited a year for you and Samson! A whole year! Providence is mighty stingy to give me only a week with you! A week and you’re out on the road again! Outlaws! In mortal danger! Oh, how fatal Samson’s delay to shoot that dog Malvézie! If he’d killed him we’d not be in this mess! Left alone, Madame de Fontenac wouldn’t have tried to get back at us, given how grateful she is for having saved her daughter and because she knows better than anyone the evil committed by her husband, who, in his youth, kidnapped her, raped her and forced her to marry him! But this Malvézie never stops plotting, scheming and pushing! He wants to take over the Fontenac domain for himself! He’ll do anything to acquire rights that he didn’t inherit from his bastard birth. Diane and her mother are done for if he succeeds. Two women! What can they do against this monster?”

But then coming to a sudden halt, putting his hands on his hips, and his tone and expression altogether changed, Jean de Siorac said, “I heard you call
maestro
Giacomi your brother. Did you become brothers?”

“In word only, not by a notarized decree, since neither of us possesses any goods that he could settle on the other.”

My father thought about this for a moment, smiled in his sly and humorous way and said, “You who were born in the second half of this century do things much faster and more precipitously than those of us born in the first. It took you two days to take Giacomi as your brother whereas Sauveterre and I took two years.”

“But you loved Sauveterre straightaway!”

“Ah, yes! At first glance! At the first shot! In our first battle! As soon as I saw what kind of a man he was, of what nobly tempered steel he was made of!” But then he smiled and sat down opposite me and said: “As for
maestro
Giacomi, other than that I’m very reassured
to have such a skilled swordsman accompany you, I must say I like him a lot. I don’t care whether he’s of noble birth or not: there’s a natural nobility about him. In matters large and small he’s a man of infinite elegance.”

I was very happy to hear these words and, blushing with the pleasure he’d given me (though still worried about the question of the ring that Miroul had so stung me about), I said, “Do you think we’ll have any trouble getting the king to pardon us?”

“I don’t know. Coligny is reputed to be in great favour with Charles IX. Unfortunately, I don’t have much confidence in this little king who lets himself be governed by his mother, and even less so in the woman herself. My Pierre, tread very carefully at court and be prepared to turn on your heels! Queen Medici is the soul of the state, she who has no soul! And to tell you the truth, this so-called favour granted to our side by the king frankly stinks! Paris hates us! Guise is forever plotting! The papist priests are screaming for our extermination! I would never have sent you hence, you and Samson, into this perilous Babylon, were it not absolutely necessary!”

“My father,” I replied, full of trepidation from the sombre tableau he’d just painted, “I will return on the very day our pardon is granted.”

Hearing this he looked me in the eyes and gave a great sigh of relief. “Oh, Pierre, your departure is making me feel very old! I’m already too sedate, too heavy, too ripe. To see you and Samson here in all your youthful vigour, such beautiful branches from my old trunk, keeps me young! When you’re gone, my mind focuses on the number of years I have left and is constantly whispering how to grow old and die. A week! How little I’ve drunk from that fountain! Adieu, Pierre! Be well, keep yourself safe! And since they killed your Accla, take my beautiful Pompée from my stables. She’s yours.”

“What, Father? You’re giving me your mare?”

“Take her! Take her! No thanks necessary! She now belongs to you.”

I would actually have preferred it if he had not given her to me since it hurt me so much that, for my sake, he would deprive himself of something so dear, and I couldn’t help seeing in this deprivation the kind of indifference to oneself which is sometimes found, along with miserliness, to be one of the effects of age—whose ravages were already so apparent in Uncle Sauveterre, so dried up and halting in his black clothes that he reminded me of a limping black crow in the bottom of a ravine. But my father, who still seemed so youthful and vigorous as he came and went, still enjoying his Franchou (as well, no doubt, as other passing petticoats in the farms around our chateau), seemed now to be showing some signs of heaviness, not of body, but of heart, and a kind of diminution of his usual gaiety of spirit.

My adieux bid to all this ageing family of Mespech (though ’twas true that there seemed to be no lack of children, my father assuring their continued arrival), I threw myself into Pompée’s saddle—she seemed very surprised and, as lively mares often do, wanted to test my reactions and tried to throw me off. But I showed her immediately that my hand, my seat and my legs were as steady as my father’s, but in no way scolded her for her petulant display, since I didn’t want our marriage to begin with blows. When she had calmed down, though I was still trembling slightly from the combat she’d just waged, I caressed her neck, admiring how her golden coat and blonde mane shone in the early-morning light. And I whispered to her in a calm and caressing voice: “Hey, beautiful Pompée, I’m so happy you’ve shown such spirit, for we’ve got some good leagues to go before you get your oats in Montaigne, and many more leagues still before we get to Paris.”

At some distance from the Château de Montaigne, I had our troop stop at a little inn that looked friendly enough, and sent Miroul on
ahead to ask the lord of the manor if he would consent to welcome us, our difficulties having come on so suddenly that there’d been no way to give him earlier notice of our arrival. We dismounted and tied our horses in the shade, since the July sun was so strong even in the late afternoon. We sat down under an arbour covered with vines, and our hostess, who had little to recommend her physically, brought us a wine that was so strangely delicious that it would have been impolite to water it down, but we did anyway since we didn’t wish to be light-headed when we met Monsieur de Montaigne. Our stomachs crying to be filled, we ordered some ham, butter, wheat biscuits and a beautiful melon. The entire meal, including seven measures of wine, cost but five sols. I thought that we should offer our hostess seven, but Samson, who controlled the purse, objected, and I didn’t insist, Giacomi pointing out that it would be best not to do anything that would make us stand out in the memory of this good wench, who scratched around us like a mother hen in a barnyard, listening to everything we said, there being very little traffic on this road and doubtless little news to digest.

Miroul returned after an hour to inform us that Monsieur de Montaigne’s secretary was waiting for us at a nearby crossroads. Remounting our horses we headed in that direction, and there, under the shadow of a grove of chestnut trees I saw a tall knave clothed in black mounted on a rather shabbily appointed workhorse, and who (I mean the knave) looked rather severe but greeted us civilly enough. He told me that he judged, by my demeanour and behaviour, that I was the leader of our little troop, and, if so, then I must be the younger son of the Baron de Mespech. He asked, therefore, if I could prove that this was so. I answered him that I was carrying a letter from my father to his master. He wanted to see it. I handed it to him. And, taking it, he broke the seal quickly and casually, and, even though it was not addressed to him, read its contents. After which, he dropped
his suspicious airs and asked very politely if we would remove our helmets and cuirasses and put on our doublets. Monsieur de Montaigne, he explained, did not like people to appear before him in his peaceful retreat, armed for war as we were.

It must have been about six o’clock when we finally reached the chateau. The secretary led us, once we’d taken off our boots, to the tower where Monsieur de Montaigne had the library that he would later describe in his
Essais
, where he regretted that he hadn’t designed a gallery where he could stroll, rather than a tower in which he was forced to walk in circles, as he was doing when we arrived. He greeted us with extreme civility, and having bid us be seated, read the letter that the secretary handed him already unsealed, shaking his head as he did and then rereading it once he’d finished, which gave me the opportunity to look at him, which I did with much curiosity, since he had—well before his pen had added to it—so great a reputation in the kingdom.

He was then thirty-nine years old, and already a year ago he had, as he put it, withdrawn into the bosom of the “learned virgins”, by which he meant the Muses, wishing to consecrate “the sweet ancestral refuge of the Montaignes to his liberty, his tranquillity and his retirement”. He struck me, from the way he welcomed us, as having very little of the courtier about him; or rather, he played at being a sort of counterfeit courtier, since he copied neither the manners nor the allure of the court, but wore a large ruff, and about his neck the medal of the order of Saint-Michel that the king had given him a year previously. For my part, I saw in him rather a clerk or a magistrate, for he displayed little physical grace, being short and rather stocky, with a pate so bald there was not a single hair on it. He was obviously more apt with the pen than with the sword, though he wore an épée at his side and, according to what I’d heard, loved to discuss warfare and battles—a tendency that our neighbour Brantôme scoffed at,
so great and intractable is the prejudice of
la noblesse d’épée
against
la noblesse de rob
e.
*

I had a chance to study him further during our conversation. He had a high, rounded forehead and high cheekbones, a full but not fat face with a long, aquiline nose, large, black, Judaic eyes and a look that was sometimes gay and jocular, at others prudent and mistrustful, as though he were worried. His fleshy lips pointed downwards at the corners of his mouth, and his moustache accentuated and continued this slope, giving him a sad air—at least until his smile came into play, which then lit up his face in the most delicious way. In short his physiognomy seemed to be a balance between two equal forces: joviality and melancholy.