Heretic Dawn (27 page)

The five of us finished the flagon in the blink of an eye, and out of courtesy I would have ordered a second had the sergeant not raised his hand and opposed it, saying that, as a master-at-arms at the Louvre, he drank little, and particularly not in the afternoon or before fencing lessons, wishing to conserve his wind and breath. I almost told him who Giacomi was, but changed my mind, observing that Giacomi himself said nothing and maintained an inscrutable expression, the
maestro
being very particular about the quality of people with whom he condescended to cross swords—not out of self-importance, as we’d seen, but because he so valued his art that he didn’t want to lower it to the level of some unpolished swashbuckler. And yet, by almost
imperceptible signs, it seemed to me that he liked the sergeant well enough, who appeared to have manners and a bearing above his condition, and who was polite, quite reserved—reticent about himself, not inquisitive about others—and little inclined to parade his prowess, as one might have expected from his height and strength, which surpassed any I’d ever seen before. As deep as his voice was and, as we’d observed, capable of thunderous shouts when necessary, he spoke gently in company, gestured little, and maintained a serene expression.

I told him my name and whose son I was, which he found very interesting since his father, who’d preceded him in the military, as his grandfather and great-grandfather had done, had fought at Calais. It seemed that the word “Calais” untied his tongue, for he told me he was from Toulouse and that he was called Rabastens. Surprised that he was from the south, I asked him how it happened that he spoke French in the Parisian manner; he smiled and told me that he’d had to work very hard at it since the Parisians, in their arrogance, were quite intolerant of any accent but their own. We all laughed, and he along with us, knowing full well what we speakers of
langue d’oc
thought of this attitude.

After this we felt more at ease with each other, and noticing that he asked questions neither about the incident in the street nor about Samson (though he must have noticed that my handsome brother, on closer inspection, was not in the least demented), I decided that I could trust him completely, and told him that I was on my way to visit Monsieur de Nançay in the rue des Sablons, and why.

“Well,” observed Rabastens, “you won’t find him. He’s not at home now. He’s gone to play tennis at the Louvre.”

“At the Louvre? Do you mean there are tennis courts at the Louvre?”

“There are two of them, not inside, but set against the surrounding walls and very conveniently placed to the right and to the left of the entrance on the rue d’Hostriche. The captain, who despite his age
remains one of the most capable players of the court, prefers the court on the left because, he says, the ground is more solid, the light better and the balls more lively. They call this court the Five Virgins because the master there has five daughters who are awaiting husbands.”

“Will they get them?”

“Assuredly so! The master is quite well-to-do since the king gives him his business.”

“The king plays tennis?”

“Furiously!” replied Rabastens.

And that this word fit Charles IX perfectly I would soon discover for myself, for you couldn’t set foot in the Louvre without people everywhere telling you with what
furia
the king blew his trumpets, brandished the hammer in his forge or shot the arquebus; or how he hunted like a madman, and leapt off his horse, knife in hand, to kill his quarry, loving the sight of blood spurting from its fuming entrails.

Rabastens very politely offered to take me to the Five Virgins to see Monsieur de Nançay, since he himself had to go to the Louvre for his fencing work. So we headed back to the rue de la Ferronnerie, and went as far as the grand’rue Saint-Honoré, which hardly deserves to be called “grand”, although there are many beautiful nobles’ houses there.

Since the names of the streets on our left, which had been carved in stone at eye level, had become illegible over time, Rabastens named them for us so that when we returned we’d remember the route we’d taken and not have to ask some insolent Guillaume. And so we passed the rue Tirechappe, then the rue de Bresse, next the rue des Poulies, and turned left into the rue de l’Hostriche, which was the most famous in Paris since it led to the Louvre.

“I call it rue de l’Hostriche,” Rabastens said, “since that’s what my father called it. But some Parisians call it l’Autruche, thinking it’s named for the ostrich, and still others call it l’Autriche, thinking it’s
named for Austria. There’s no way to know who’s right and who’s wrong, since the name has completely worn away.”

“But isn’t there a map of the city that would show it’s real name?”

“I’ve heard there was one,” Rabastens replied, “although few have ever seen it, and those that have claim that it was full of mistakes, both in the layout and in the names of streets.”

“Well,” I thought, “what a strange and anarchic city, where everything is so uncertain: the lighting, public safety, street names!” But I fell silent when I saw the Louvre, which filled me with a kind of silent awe and even fear, such as the subjects of a great and powerful monarch should feel in his presence. And though I’m not normally subject to such abject emotions, I nevertheless couldn’t help feeling dwarfed by the immense city that surrounded me and by the prodigious building that commanded the kingdom.

Certainly it’s no insignificant thing in Sarlat to be the younger son of the Baron de Mespech, lodged in a chateau with such beautiful ramparts, cousin of the Caumont brothers of Castelnau and Milandes, allied with Pierre de Bourdeille, the abbot of Brantôme, and friend of so many Huguenot and papist gentlemen in Périgord. But here, what was I? What did I matter? What was I worth in this capital city and at the foot of the Louvre, bristling with its towers? This was the seat of royal power, with its Swiss guards, its prisons, its cannon (a single one of which could have destroyed the walls of Mespech), and its sovereign, descended from a great line, absolute master of one of the great kingdoms of the universe, holding irrefutable sway over the lives and liberties of his subjects—and what’s more, solemnly crowned, anointed by the holy chrism, ruling by a divine right that even the Huguenots wouldn’t dare contest!

The wall surrounding the chateau began at the corner of the rue de l’Hostriche, but you couldn’t see the three towers that were lined up along it, since the king had allowed houses to be built up against
this wall, which considerably diminished its defensive value. But did the king really need this enclosure, these moats which ran along his formidable palace to protect him? Against whom? There were so many riches that flowed his way and so many gentlemen to protect them, who were so zealous to serve him that they would have given their souls to him if he’d asked for them.

The keeper of the tennis courts and five or six guards, poleaxes in hand, stopped us at the entryway into the Five Virgins, and wouldn’t have let us pass had not Rabastens pushed us through ahead of him, including Miroul, for which I was very grateful since our valet had acted so quickly to save my Samson.

In truth, this tennis court wasn’t any better than the one belonging to Chancellor Saporta in Montpellier, other than in its grandstands, which were so full of courtiers and noble ladies that there wouldn’t have been room for a pin—this was doubtless the reason that Rabastens led us, by way of a small staircase, to a stand that was smaller but higher than the first one, and that occupied the back wall and was made of wood like the grandstand; the wall opposite this structure was made of closely joined stone bricks so that one could play, as they said in Paris,
à la bricole
, that is, one could make the ball ricochet against its surface to place it in the opponent’s camp without its passing under the rope. But I express myself badly when I use this word, for the two opposing camps were separated by a rope, to be sure, but to it were attached a whole series of closely spaced fringes that extended to the ground: a refinement unknown in Montpellier, where occasionally there were very hot arguments about whether the ball had passed over or under the rope; here, however, the fringes impeded the ball’s progress when it was launched too low, so that there were fewer disputes—or at least so I believed.

The smaller stands, to which Rabastens led us, were occupied only by a scorekeeper, who stood ready, a piece of white charcoal in hand,
to mark the points of the match on a board placed at the front of the stand, and easily visible by the spectators in the grandstand that was at a right angle to ours. The scorekeeper’s face had been sewn up with a scar across the top of his bald skull; he had a wooden left leg and the face of a veteran of several wars—which he must have been, for, initially unhappy about our arrival, he softened considerably when he saw Rabastens, and immediately placed on his shiny bald head a feathered hat of the kind worn by the foot guards twenty years previously, and then doffed it when he made a deep bow to the sergeant, who returned the gesture with great dignity.

“Monsieur,” said the man, “if these gentlemen are with you they are welcome here. But they should sit at the back and shouldn’t show themselves since these stands are reserved for the score.”

“I understand completely,” said Rabastens.

We four then bowed to the scorekeeper, who again put on his hat (which had as many feathers as a rooster’s tail), and doffed it a second time as he bowed to us, though without as much pomp or so deep a genuflection as he’d made to the sergeant.

As for me, I only had eyes for the grandstand, never having seen an assemblage so richly attired in silks, brocades and pearls, and other precious stones, nor one so colourful, the courtiers, as well as the ladies, dressed in clothes of which not a sleeve or stocking was the same colour as any other item, so that you would have thought you were looking at a garden of a thousand different flowers displaying a thousand palettes of nature.

But I was distracted from this gay and gallant spectacle by a great commotion in the grandstand caused by the entrance of the queen mother, whom I recognized by her black clothing and by the retinue of ladies-in-waiting of such beauty as to stop your breath in your lungs. These ladies were in truth famous throughout the kingdom for their beauty, and gave the impression of flying around
Catherine de’ Medici in their brilliant finery like so many brilliant pieces of the rainbow.

The queen mother took her place in the middle of the grandstand under a canopy painted with the fleur-de-lis that I would have thought reserved for the king. But that she should casually usurp it did not surprise me, since d’Argence had written to my father that at Charles IX’s entry into the city of Metz, three years previously, Catherine de’ Medici had demanded that she enter the gates before the king her son—you heard me: before the king!—and with her own cortège of ladies and officers. Well, no doubt the Florentine needed revenge for all the slights and scorn she’d suffered, both in the court of François I and during the reign of her husband, Henri II, when, with Diane de Poitiers reigning, even in the conjugal bed, she had to accept her rival’s supremacy.

It seemed as though, from that time on, she had only insults for names: “the shopkeeper” was the name the courtiers in the Louvre gave her when she arrived from Florence. “Jezebel” was what the Huguenots called her after the Meeting of Bayonne, at which she tried to bargain for French blood with the Duque de Alba, in an attempt to exchange the massacre of the Protestants for a Spanish marriage.

I could only see her from above and in profile, except when she turned her head to the right, which she did quite often, her large, dilated eyes paying close attention to everything that was going on around her. She seemed smaller and more obese than she’d been described to me, her cheeks round and puffy, her lower lip hanging loosely, and yet not at all languid in her movements, but, quite the contrary, lively and vigorous. She had a worried look in her eyes, which were veiled by heavy eyelids that gave her a somewhat toad-like appearance. Pierre de L’Étoile had told me that she had taken great umbrage at the fact that Coligny had Charles’s ear, and was pushing the king to go to war in Flanders, believing that the favour
our leader enjoyed might threaten the great power she exercised in the state and force her into exile.

I cannot fathom how all those splendid ladies-in-waiting, with their beautiful hoop skirts, managed to squeeze in behind the queen mother on this grandstand, which was already so full, but I certainly wouldn’t have minded to find myself in the middle of their ranks, with all the rustling of the petticoats, and I began to dream about it with great appetite given how much women’s beauty holds sway over our thoughts without our even willing it to. But suddenly I remembered my unfortunate doublet, which, not content simply to be outmoded, had the temerity to display on its front a shameful repair, and I felt a cruel chagrin. This piece of my wardrobe would cause me to be completely despised in gallant company, and, what’s more, would doubtless deprive me for ever of the sweet joys that the little house on the rue Trouvevache had promised me that very morning. What to do? Without my own money, or any money I could expect from Samson, was there any remedy to this predicament?

I was in the midst of such mental thorns and brambles when I saw a middle-aged gentleman enter the arena clad in shirt and leggings only—that is, without his doublet. He was fairly tall, but well built, youthful and vigorous, with tanned skin, grey eyes, thick eyebrows, a square face and a goatee more pepper than salt; his head was erect and he had a spring in his step even though he was walking slowly. He headed towards the queen mother, made her a deep bow, to which she responded with a nod and a smile gracious enough for me to believe that this gentleman was well received in court. This was confirmed by the applause of the courtiers and the ladies when he greeted them all with an ample and gracious gesture.

“Monsieur de Nançay,” observed the scorekeeper to our mentor, “seems none the worse for his fall from his horse.”