Judith Merkle Riley (5 page)

“A perfect day, my friend,” I heard him say to Annibal as we rode home past the green stalks of growing wheat, the swaying poplars, the peasant huts with their little vegetable gardens toward the pointed gables of the farm. My brother’s reply was lost in the breeze. But as we clattered through our courtyard gates, I heard him say, “You are a fortunate fellow, Annibal, to be pampered by all these good-looking sisters.” Again, Philippe d’Estouville flashed that delicious, knowing smile. How dazzling the glance of his amber eyes! How bold and charming and, God help me, young and vibrant, he seemed, compared to Thibault Villasse. But between us stood rank and favor, the demands of family, reputation, and honor. If only I dared…

He had spurred his horse forward, and now was riding beside Laurette, telling her a joke, and she was laughing. I saw him glance at the pretty ankles she managed to let her riding habit reveal, mounted sideways as she was, her dainty little feet placed like a pair of jewels on the brightly painted board buckled to the left-hand side of her saddle. I saw she had worn her best pair of green stockings. And how on earth had she got them to stretch so tight? I looked down at my own big, bony feet where they sat beside each other. Betrayers, I thought. No one wants to see
your
legs in stockings, no matter how high your skirts get hiked. Maybe Villasse was all I deserved.

You must imagine the mournful state to which I had descended, in complete contradiction to the glorious red of the setting sun, by the time mother greeted us at the door, with the unwelcome letter reminding me of my impending fate. Villasse had written that he had acquired, from a printer at Lyons, an entire stock of religious works, with hand-illuminated capitals, and ordered the new curtains for our wedding bed. Since there was now nothing lacking for my personal and spiritual comfort, there was no need to delay the joyous occasion of our nuptials any longer.

“He’s enclosed a list of the books, Sibille. They seem quite numerous,” said mother, handing me the letter. Oh, dear, there they all were, pious sermons, works of the church fathers, a missal, a book of hours. I thought they’d take longer to find than that. He must have sent his clerk directly there.

“B-but I haven’t finished embroidering my wedding linens yet,” I stammered. Too soon, much too soon.

That evening we played tric-trac after supper, and then sang harmonies about the table. But the vast dejection of spirit I was experiencing weighed down my heart and spoiled my voice. So downcast was I that I did not even offer to read the first pages of my
Dialogue
, although they had been received so successfully at the last artistic afternoon I had attended at my cousin Matheline’s. Somehow, it was all the worse watching the dashing stranger dote upon Laurette, who wound her golden curls about one finger while she sang, looking up from beneath her eyelashes at him. How fascinated she seemed with every word that Philippe d’Estouville said: about life at court, the politics and favoritism in M. de Damville’s company, and blow-by-blow descriptions of every one of his twelve celebrated duels, in which he had never failed to kill his man.

“I have such a difficulty at court, you see—so many ladies are attracted to me—their husbands, so jealous, but with each affair of honor, the ladies flock in even greater numbers. So my blade brings on more of what it would end—”

“Of course, oh, it is a trial, suffering such people,” said Laurette, as he glanced at her with burning eyes to gauge the effect of his speech. Ah, Misery, were I to portray you in verse most symbolic, you would be more than wrapped in dark vestments of sorrow: you would have large feet.

The following day, when Monsieur de Damville’s new stallion, sleek and rested, was led out the courtyard gate with his retinue of grooms, his trainer, and his military escort, we stood at the front steps waving, then ran to the tower room to catch the last sight of the procession, of Annibal’s bright cloak, of the stranger’s elegant form, until they vanished out of sight on the dusty road.

“Sibille, take out your cards and tell me about
Philippe
,” sighed Laurette when they had disappeared.

“He’s due to inherit estates in Picardy and Normandy, and is out of your reach,” I said, rather cruelly. “You don’t need the cards for that.”

“But I
know
he likes me,” she answered. “Why should you be jealous? You have a husband already.”

“I’m just pointing out the truth. A man of his standing does not marry where there’s no dowry.”

“Do you think you can set yourself up, just because grandfather left you property? He might have done the same for me, if I’d been born before he died. And when Aunt Pauline dies and father inherits her fortune, we’ll all have dowry enough. Philippe said I had wonderful eyes. Beauty does count for something, you know.”

“So you count on Auntie dying? How do you know she won’t leave everything to the church?”

“Oh! You are unspeakable!” said Laurette, and she flounced off in a rage down the tower stair. “I have better things to do…” I heard her voice fade off as she vanished. And I have worse, I thought, and put my head down on the windowsill and wept.

Now it was not too much time later, as I recall, only a week or so, when I was in the midst of gathering up my poor nerves to write Villasse a letter explaining that my trousseau was not yet complete and the material ordered in Orléans for my wedding dress had been delayed in shipment, that something most unusual happened. I was in the
salle
at father’s big desk—my grandfather’s really, inlaid in six woods and too valuable to be left in the house that had been rented to the glove merchant—struggling with my response, when a valet in livery arrived at the courtyard gate.

“But, Sibille,” Isabelle was saying, as she leaned over my shoulder to read what I was writing, “you’re not ordering material from Orléans. You know you’re making over mother’s wedding dress.” Mother, seated at her embroidery frame, pretended not to hear, but her mouth was tight with disapproval.

“It’s almost the same. Making over a dress takes a long time. A very long time. Longer than ordering, really, because remaking is much harder than sewing fresh. Besides, you wouldn’t want him to think we wouldn’t honor him enough to have an entirely new gown made, would you?” I was just admiring the effect that powerfully reasoned arguments of logic have on twelve-year-old girls who are driven by an unholy and Pandora-like curiosity to read other people’s writing over their shoulders, when Françoise came running in.

“Sibille, Sibille! Auntie has sent her very own footman with a wedding gift! Oh, you should see how beautiful his livery is! He has a silk doublet in her colors!” Mother looked up, half rising from her seat.

“So, let’s all see what that crazy old woman has taken it into her head to send you this time,” said father, who had found the valet would not deliver over his charge except into my own hands.

“There is also a letter from Madame Tournet,” said the valet, skillfully evading father’s grasp. Mother stood, coming closer to see the letter.

“Well then, read it, read it,” said father. “Let’s hope she sent you money, and not another daft book of poetry.”

“‘My dear Goddaughter,’” I read aloud. “‘The cards told me that you are soon destined to leave home. Last week, on my way to Mass, I saw Monsieur Villasse in the street near your old home, and learned from a servant that he is at last to wed you, and that the date is not far. How like my brother not to tell me—’”

At this, father snarled, “Do you think I have to let her in on all my business?”

“But Father, surely, you could invite—”

“I told you I don’t want you ever seeing her, and the same is true for all of you! Don’t any of you have anything to do with her! She wants nothing better than to drag you into the gutter with her! Sister indeed! My sister is dead!”

“But Father,” said Isabelle, “she doesn’t live in the gutter at all. Her house is very large, and in the best part of town.”

“And I would love to see what’s in it,” said Laurette.

“I forbid you to ever set foot in that house. The name Tournet must not cross your lips in public.” But I read on:

“‘Although I have not been allowed to see your face since you were a little thing, through Annibal, I have learned that you have grown as I thought you might.’”

“Why is Annibal allowed to see her, if she is my godmother?” I asked. Suddenly curious, I looked up from the letter. My father’s face was as hard as stone.

“Annibal is a man,” said father. “Read the rest.”

“Auntie bought him that bay hackney he was riding. He told me so,” piped up Françoise.

“Shhh!” said mother, putting her hand over Françoise’s mouth. I read on:

“‘My gift is one that you must keep about your person always, for your own consolation in your new married life. Read it in solitude. It will bring you much solace. Take my blessings with you, whatever comes. I remain always, your affectionate, Auntie.’”

I unwrapped the oiled silk from the packet the valet proffered. It was a plain book bound in calfskin, curiously heavy for its small size. I opened it at random and saw a beautiful engraving of Our Lord, surrounded by men in armor, being kissed by an unpleasant-looking fellow whose malignant eye had an unpleasant resemblance to that of my intended. “
Passio
domini
nostri
iesu
xpi
secundum
Johannem
,” it said beneath, in red letters. A book of hours, most singularly appropriate and in good taste, if not as lavish a gift as I had hoped.

“A
prayer
book. What greater hypocrisy is that woman capable of?” said father, and I knew suddenly he had been anticipating money, or wedding jewelry, which he might well have caused to be transferred into his own hands for some useful purpose of his own contriving. And handsomely made as the book was, the plain calfskin binding, slightly stained with some brownish stuff, reduced the value. Yet there was the matter of the weight. I turned it over in my hands, inspecting it again. This talk of solitude, I thought; it may be more than a tribute to my sensitivity of spirit. When I’m alone, I’ll look inside the spine. Aunt Pauline doubtless knows father even better than I and may have hidden a little money in the book for my own use. On further contemplation of the matter, it seemed that a book of hours, even though printed in two colors, if it had no hand painting on the plates, was a bit too plain for a wedding gift. Definitely, there must be more to the book than appeared on the face of it.

But there was a stir and a cry. Mother, who had pressed in close again to see what the gift was, had fainted.

It was suppertime, and the gentleman led the Sieur de Bernage into a beautiful room draped with magnificent tapestries. When the food was brought onto the table, he saw emerge from behind the tapestry the most beautiful woman it was ever possible to behold…except that her face was very pale and her expression very sad. When she had eaten a little, she asked for something to drink, and a servant of the house brought her a most remarkable drinking cup made of a skull, the apertures of which were filled in with silver.
The lord of the house explained to Bernage
that the lady was his wife, and the skull that of the lover he had murdered on the way to her bed, from which he had made her drink for all the years since to remind her of her sin.

“Ladies [said Oisille] if all the women who behaved like this one were to drink from cups like hers, I fear that many a golden goblet would be replaced by a skull!…”

“I find the punishment extremely reasonable,” said Parlamente. “For just as the crime was worse than death, so the punishment was worse than death.”

“I don’t agree,” said Ennasuite. “I would far rather be shut up in my room with the bones of all my lovers for the rest of my days than die with them, since there’s no sin one can I make amends for while one is alive, but after death, there’s no making amends.”

Marguerite of Navarre

the heptameron, 1512

Now what with the stir over mother fainting, and the fetching of water, and the fanning, and the shouting, it was a while until I got the book alone. A short inspection revealed that it contained ten gold florins, newly minted and not clipped, wrapped in an embroidered handkerchief and stuffed into the spine of the book, much as I had imagined. I sewed these into my petticoat as a precaution, since even a lady may occasionally have need of money of her own, just for some emergency, you understand, and not for any reckless or unsuitable female plans. And as for mother fainting, she said it was the air, and took to her bed for a long stay, where she lived on broth and coughed up blood.

But within a few weeks, father grew bored with her illness and rode off to Orléans on our best saddle horse, with his steward on the second-best horse, ostensibly to collect the rent from the glove maker—or was it glove seller? Whatever it was, it was entirely too commercial for respectable gentlefolk to deal with and may possibly have involved foolish expenditures it would have depressed me to know about.

And then, too, there was something melancholy and compelling about the little prayer book with the stained cover, that caused me to carry it about, and pause in my little nature rambles not to admire the wild roses by the meadow or the flash of blackbirds’ wings, but to draw it out, and wonder where it had come from, why it was stained, and what the strange house that had held it was really like inside. This new brooding brought on nightmares, and several times I awoke in a fright, not knowing what was wrong, and thinking I heard cries and the clash of steel. And then, one night, I woke, or dreamed I woke, and saw a man, really almost a boy, perhaps seventeen or eighteen and younger than I, standing by the bed and staring down at me. He was wearing an old-fashioned doublet and student’s gown, and his heavy, dark, curling hair escaped from his flat cap in an unruly mass. But it was his eyes, so deep and sorrowful, that terrified me. They made me think of death. I sat up so quickly I annoyed Isabelle, who said in her sleep, “Sibille, quit all this rolling around at night—you’ve taken the covers again.” But by then, the figure, or the dream, had vanished.

The following day, high clouds began to pile up in the sky, and then a thunderstorm kept me from my walk, which made me even more nervous and fretful. But at last the weather cleared, and it was then that we saw Vincent the steward coming around the bend in the road, riding through the puddles alone.

“Vincent, where is my husband?” asked mother. The smell of damp wool mingled with the muggy heat in the kitchen as the old servant hung his still damp cloak by the fire. He was covered in mud from the long walk. Mother had risen from her sickbed to supervise the skinning and cleaning of a brace of hares for the supper pot. She had a big apron, spotted with blood, over her gown. In the long silence that followed, the sound of the kettle lids rattling on the boiling pots sounded like an entire battery of snare drums. At last Vincent drew a long breath, and then spoke.

“Madame, he has been taken by the
bailli
, and is being held in prison.”

“For what, dear God?”

“For bein’ a Lutheran and a heretic.”

“A heretic?” I said. “That’s ridiculous! Why on earth should they think that?”

“That glove merchant, Dumoulin, who was rentin’ the house. He was one of ’em—a Lutheran for sure, which was bound to cast suspicion on Monsieur. I told him, Madame, I told him—but you know how set he gets when it’s about money.”

“But, surely—”

“The neighbors saw people goin’ in at the same time almost every week, then comin’ out late. Somebody—nobody knows who—denounced Dumoulin for the crawlin’ snake he was, so the authorities waited one night and pounced on ’em all. Sure enough, it was one of those damned devil’s assemblies they call a ‘
prêche
.’ There they all were, orgyin’ and worshipin’ Satan, with Dumoulin leadin’ them all! Dancin’ naked, they said they was, around a chalice with human blood, in a mockery of the Lord’s supper! Heretical tracts from Geneva were stuffed into every cupboard, and I hear tell there was a whole trunkful of infant skeletons left over from their bloody sacrifices. I heard it all at the Moor’s Head tavern while I was waitin’ for Monsieur, but no, he wouldn’t listen to nothin’ and when he went for his rent, they took him in. Me, I was lucky enough just to get away when I spied the
bailli
.”

“Orgies! Infant sacrifices! In my father’s house! I can hardly breathe for the shame of it,” said mother, sitting down suddenly on a stool, and beginning to cough again.

“But why would they arrest father? They know who we are. We are good Catholics. Father was deceived,” I said.

“That sly ol’ demon, Dumoulin, said under torture that Monsieur de La Roque knew about it when he rented them the house, so they think Monsieur is one of them.”

“But, Vincent, you should have stayed and told them the truth,” said mother.

“Oh, Madame, I’d have stayed a hundred times if it would have done a bit of good. But when I told the boys at the Moor’s Head, they explained to me there’s no way I’d be knowin’, since lords that are Lutherans all keep themselfs hid, with the Devil’s aid. You can’t tell it from the outside. Even a wife can’t tell a secret Lutheran. You have to pry it out from the inside. They’ll be burning the glove merchant and the lot of ’em next week. The whole city’s plannin’ to go.”

Vincent’s eyes slid sideways in a way that aroused a certain suspicion within me. Surely, a man who had been offered such trust, such position in a family of distinction, should have remained bravely with his master to defend him against the evil slanders of a treacherous, heretical seller of gloves! But to the circumstances of Vincent’s birth I must attribute many of his flaws of character, especially a certain cowardly self-seeking and a greasy mercenary streak. He was, after all, only a bastard of father’s on a peasant woman, and not a real member of the family. But father had been excessively fond of Vincent’s mother while she lived, and this weakness had led him to place greater trust in her son than I would consider appropriate.

“Suppose he did know the man was a heretic? Suppose he did?” whispered mother to herself. “Ah, God, then we are ruined at last. Everything we own will be forfeit. Reduced to beggary, oh, thank God my father never lived to see this day! My babies, my poor babies.”

“Mother, everybody knows who we are in the city. I’m sure that when father explains that he goes to mass every year and would never dream of associating with heretics, they’ll let him go.”

“I’m afraid it don’t work that way, Demoiselle Sibille,” said Vincent. “They can’t risk lettin’ one of ’em go. Besides, I been thinkin’ he might ’a known. Not because he was one of ’em, mind you. He might ’a just done it for more rent. Not knowing where it would lead, you understand…” I felt a distinctly heavy sensation in the region of my heart. Such behavior would not be unknown to your father, my Sensible Self whispered in a malign little hiss. Nonsense, replied my Higher Self, think of it this way: he could very well have been totally deceived, being the sort of person for whom the complexities of the spiritual dimension of life were an entirely closed mystery. Why yes, I thought, that was doubtless the explanation. My heart lightened, then gave a bound as my Higher, Poetic Self suddenly presented my mind with a noble image of great inspiration.

“Mother, I have heard about these cases. I heard of a gentlewoman who took a petition to the Bishop for her son.”

“A petition? Who can write us such a thing? How could we summon a notary in time? How could it be taken there before—? The strappado—surely they wouldn’t use that on a gentleman born—heresy—who knows what they do there? Oh, God, God, if only Annibal were here.” With all the commotion and bad news, my sisters and several household servants had crowded into the kitchen, their eyes wide, their faces solemn.

“Maman,” said Françoise, tugging on mother’s skirts for attention. “Maman, Sibille is very clever.”

“Oh, my mind’s a fog. I don’t know what to do. I must have Annibal, we have to send for him…”

The gold pieces sewn into my petticoats seemed heavier and heavier, and I could almost feel them burning there. You can do anything, they whispered. You can hire an
avocat
to search out the law, and prove that father is entirely innocent of conspiring with heretics. You can travel to the city; you can see the Bishop. He won’t deny you an audience; after all, didn’t he himself baptize you, long ago when he was still only a priest? In my mind, I could see myself, dressed tragically in black, my eyes delicately tear-stained behind a silken veil, presenting him with a petition so elegantly and movingly written as to bring tears to the eyes even as it moved the reader to deep admiration of its composer. Oh, moving and profound Word, what cannot you accomplish in the hands of an inspired soul?

“Sibille, you must write that petition and save father,” said Isabelle. “Annibal is too far away. Only you can do it.” With her words, my Higher Self swept all doubt away in a veritable torrent of exalted feeling. If I were the one who saved father, he would never again remark on the size of my feet, or the boniness of my person. Liberated from the cruel prison and the shadow of the gibbet, he would embrace my feet, generously sized as they were, weeping in gratitude. So beautiful was the very thought of it that my Sensible Self, that squalid little voice, was entirely drowned in the floods of exquisite anticipation.

“I know just how to do it,” I said. “I’ve read about it in a book. You take your petition, and you just fling yourself on the Bishop’s feet and weep and then he grants your request.”

“Was it a book about Bishops?” asked Laurette, whose narrow mind and insensitive nature often lead her to suspicion of those inspired by higher sentiments.

“Not exactly, more about petitions.”

“What kind? The heresy kind?” At that moment her little blue eyes looked especially like enameled beads of the more common, inexpensive variety.

“No, the traitor kind, which is almost exactly the same. How the Duchess of Valentinois rescued her old father from a traitor’s death by flinging herself at the feet of King Francis.”

“Sibille! That’s a dreadful, scandalous tale!” said mother, suddenly distracted from her grief. She looked at me suddenly with red-rimmed eyes, and put her hand on her bosom. “Where did you find such a filthy thing?”

“Matheline had it. We girls had a
significant
discussion of it.”

“In a
conven
t
?” said mother, scandalized.

“Oh, but it’s a moral principle you see. I mean, we didn’t discuss the book directly, but we’d all read it. Matheline said it was all right, because it was important to know whether it was better to be disobedient to do the right thing, or to be obedient and see wickedness triumph. The Duchess’s father blessed her for what she had done.”

“And so that dreadful Matheline passed her wicked book around in secret. What else did she show you? Matheline is a wolf in sheep’s clothing!”

“But, Mother,” I said, suddenly struck by something, “how do you know so much about what’s in that book?”

“I was young once,” answered mother, her voice icy. “And I paid. I had hoped you would do better.”

“Who else will go to plead for father, if I don’t?”

“I’ll send Vincent at dawn tomorrow to carry the news to Annibal. He must use his influence with the Montmorencys; he must go and plead with the Constable himself for his father.”

“And suppose he doesn’t get there in time?”

“Oh, Annibal, Annibal, if only you hadn’t left so soon!” Mother wrung her hands, then doubled over, in another one of her coughing spells. Blood seeped between her fingers. But she was a creature of steel. Eyes half closed, propped up sitting on father’s big chair, she gave orders to send a boy north on our second-best horse to find Annibal at Compiègne, and tell him to carry her request that his commanding officer, the Baron de Damville, and Damville’s father, the great Constable Montmorency, intervene in Father’s case, for the sake of his ancient service to the crown. “Daughters,” she said, as we carried her, half-fainting to her room, “there is nothing to do now but pray.”

***

It was very nearly midnight. My brain aflame with a thousand worries, I sat in my nightgown at the very table where I had signed away my liberty and grandfather’s vineyard, writing, writing in secret while the household slept. An almost spent candle stood before me, casting its feeble glow over an ocean of crumpled sheets of paper. I set down my pen to inspect my last and best effort. How could all those noble and poetical touches look so contrived, so silly, so inadequate? Was it just the dark, the summer heat, that made the sweat drip off my face and dampen my palms? Perhaps something on a more classical model, more austere, fewer adjectives. I took up the pen and surveyed. “O harken to the distressed and pitiful cry of miserable and helpless orphans, great Christian, generous, discerning lord—” Firmly, I scratched out “orphans” and substituted “faithful and obedient daughters of the Church.” Orphans might imply that father was guilty, after all. But somehow the new addition didn’t look right either. I crumpled up the paper and took out a new sheet to start over. Somewhere, somewhere, I thought, there must be a Muse of Official Documents, dried up as a prune, dressed up in a drab robe ornamented with sealing wax. Sitting somewhere on a throne of files and folders, she is mocking me now. Oh, why was I such a boaster, so sure of the powers of my passionately flaming pen?