Heretic Dawn (28 page)

“Indeed,” Rabastens replied. “The captain is built with brick and mortar. You’d need a cannonball to take him down!”

A brouhaha from the grandstand interrupted him, followed by a burst of applause, and I saw that a second gentleman, also clad only in shirt and leggings, had entered the tennis court. But this one rushed up to the stands, bowed to the queen mother and then ran over to Nançay and embraced him. After which, wishing to reach the opponent’s side, he simply jumped over the rope; but, strange to tell, he went head-first as if diving into a river, and landed on the ground on his two hands and neck and did a complete somersault before coming to a standing position with incredible dexterity—an exploit that was warmly applauded by the spectators.

“Now there’s a marvellous leaper!” I exclaimed to Rabastens. “Who is the gentleman?”

“But it’s the king,” whispered Rabastens.

“What? Did I hear you right? The king?”

“The king himself.”

I was astounded, and you may well imagine that I had eyes only for the sovereign as the tennis master walked over to him, followed by two valets, one carrying the racquets and the other a basketful of balls.

Charles IX was fairly tall and well proportioned, though very thin and a bit stooped, and, despite his agility he had a generally unhealthy look about him. His eyes maintained a thoroughly distrustful look; this was coupled with an expression that suggested both a lack of self-assurance and a general nervousness. Moreover, his gestures and his behaviour betrayed a need to be seen and, at the same time, a sort of childish fear of not being seen enough, having nothing of the composure or the self-confidence of a man of twenty-two whose power, if he’d wanted to exercise it, would be practically limitless.

With the tennis master I found him both too familiar and too brusque, all smiles one minute and frowning the next. Of the racquets
that were offered him, two were strung with string, one square and one oval, and a third, round one was made of stretched parchment. From what I could tell by watching him, it was this third one that the tennis master recommended, a choice the king refused outright, as if he judged this suggestion to be impertinent. He then seemed to hesitate between the two strung racquets and kept taking up the oval one, then the square one without being able to make up his mind. This oscillation threatening to last the entire morning, the tennis master, without any sign that he was intimidated, again suggested the one made of parchment, and this time the king accepted it, but with visibly bad grace and less because he was convinced it was the right choice than because he simply couldn’t make up his mind between the other two.

The second valet offering him the choice of a ball from the basket, the king made a brusque and impatient gesture, rejecting the responsibility of this decision, passing it on to Monsieur de Nançay, who acquitted himself admirably in this task, bouncing each of the balls on the ground and keeping the liveliest of them.

“Nançay,” said the king, “I’m wagering 100 écus on myself. How much do you wager?”

“Fifty écus on myself, sire.”

“By God!” cried the king. “Fifty is very little!”

“Sire,” replied Monsieur de Nançay, bowing to him, “I’d wager more if I were more assured of winning.”

At this the king laughed and seemed happy, and even more so when the Medici’s page stepped up to announce that the queen mother would give 100 écus to the winner and fifty to the loser. The colourful assembly applauded and buzzed with appreciation at this announcement, and, as for me, I wouldn’t swear that the whole thing hadn’t been arranged beforehand by the Florentine and Monsieur de Nançay so that the captain wouldn’t leave any feathers on the court.

The two umpires (two gentlemen, one chosen by the king and the other by Monsieur de Nançay) immediately requested the money from each player and the whole amount was deposited in a little pile on a small velvet rug placed at the level of the cord. All the while the king was jumping up and down with impatience and giving furious racquet strokes in the air.

“Sire,” said Monsieur de Nançay, “shall we play
à la bricole
and allow ricocheted shots?”

“I don’t know,” answered the king. “Do you want to?”

“I think not.”

But since Charles IX fell silent and couldn’t decide, Monsieur de Nançay, pretending the decision had been made, continued, “Sire, would you like to serve first?”

“I don’t know,” answered the king. “I don’t see that it’s to my advantage.”

“Then don’t, sire, since it might be to your disadvantage,” smiled Nançay.

“Sire,” said one of the two umpires, “may it please Your Majesty to spin your racquet? Let chance decide.”

“I choose the mark,” said Nançay.

“And I the blank side,” said the king, quickly making this choice since there was no other.

The king placed his racquet on the ground with it’s oval top down, spun it like a top and let go. It fell on the mark, so that Monsieur de Nançay had service and the king seemed quite vexed, as if, not having it, he suddenly perceived that there was some advantage to it he hadn’t discerned before.

“Now, let’s play!” he cried, backing up in little jumps almost all the way to our little gallery, and, seeing him take up his position, the valets who would pick up the balls ran to take their places, some to the four corners of the court and others to the sides of the rope. The
tennis master threw a ball to Monsieur de Nançay from among the ones that he’d chosen. The captain caught it with his left hand and immediately set himself to serve.

“Here you go, sire!” he cried.

He served the ball over the rope with great force and, though it bounced quite a distance from him, the king rushed at it and struck it so fast and at such a low angle that Nançay couldn’t reach it, even on the rebound.

“Fifteen for me!” shouted the king, greatly pleased with himself.

To which the umpire—although the two consulted on each point, only one of the two spoke—echoed the king: “Fifteen for the king!”

So the scorekeeper, with a sweeping movement of his arm, as if he were about to put his lips to a trumpet, marked “fifteen” in white chalk on his slate in exquisitely shaped and rounded characters.

“Here you go, sire!” cried Nançay, but this time the king couldn’t catch up with the ball, even with the end of his racquet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Thirty to His Majesty!” cried the umpire.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Daily.”

“And where would that be?”

“In Montpellier.”

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

“Not at all.”

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

“Doesn’t he play against the king?”

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

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

“Here you go, sire!” said Nançay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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