The Brethren (26 page)

“No!” fumed my father, banging his right fist repeatedly on the table. “The first duty of Duras was to get his army out of this filthy wasps’ nest in Périgord as fast as their horses could carry them, to escape by forced march from Montluc’s claws and to lead his 12,000 men intact to Condé.”

Seated, hands on my knees and, like my brothers, as quiet as a mouse, I listened to all this with admiration and yet some surprise, for I had just become aware that my father, Huguenot and loyalist that he was, might
perhaps
have rebelled against his king if he had been offered the commander-in-chief position at Gourdon. Jean de Siorac was thus quite right to say that the very question of duty in such troubled times was “in essence quite complex”… So it was, in any case, and only became more so when we learnt at Mespech that on the evening of 3rd October, Duras’s army, having made its approach, had besieged Sarlat. It seemed from the Brethren’s conversations on the matter that a Huguenot victory over a city to which they were attached by so many friendly ties plunged them into very mixed feelings indeed.

“Duras won’t take Sarlat,” said my father with a start when he heard the news.

“But Jean,” observed Sauveterre, “you speak as though you wish the town wouldn’t be taken.”

“But do you yourself wish it?”

“I wish it,” replied Sauveterre, without a trace of enthusiasm, “as a first success of our armies in an unjust war that has been imposed on us.”

“But is this really a success?” asked my father, pacing back and forth impatiently. “Suppose Duras takes the city. What happens then? Our soldiers, who are, after all, soldiers like any others, will perform their usual exploits: sack, murder, rape of young women. They’ll kill a few priests and ransom the very rich. They’ll pillage and denude the churches. They’ll exact tithes from the merchants. And after two days of such chaos, they’ll leave Sarlat as firmly Catholic as when they arrived, and full of new reasons for taking revenge on the reformers. No, no, the fall of Sarlat accomplishes nothing. It’s only in the north of the kingdom, between Condé and Guise, that any resolution will come.”

“On the other hand,” said Sauveterre, “if Duras fails at Sarlat, this failure will deflate the courage of our soldiers and provide a bad augury for what is to follow.”

“Indeed, indeed!” agreed my father, his head bowed. “That’s exactly what I keep telling myself. But imagine 12,000 soldiers let loose in a town the size of Sarlat, which counts but 5,000 inhabitants! My brother, is this what our gospel teaches?”

We learnt the following day that Duras had set up Mass-chaser and two culverins in the gardens of at the foot of the Pissevi hills, not far from the fountain of Boudouyssou. Firing began at eight that morning, and two hours later the opposing wall had been demolished, but Duras’s battery had been so hastily installed, without earthworks to protect it, neither faggots nor gabions to cover it, that the harsh fire from the town had killed the master artilleryman, wounded the artilleryman and forced the rest of the crew to flee. Mass-chaser and the two culverins were thus abandoned in their garden, and any access to them prevented by an uninterrupted hail of bullets from the town walls. If the Sarlat townspeople had had enough troops for a sortie, the three artillery pieces would have been theirs. But they could not consider it and occupied themselves with reparations to the wall on that side.

At ten o’clock that evening, night having fallen, our troops sounded the alarm on all sides, with loud trumpet calls, beating of drums, strange shouts and much shooting and brandishing of ladders, and thanks to this diversion succeeded in removing Mass-chaser and the culverins from the Pissevi gardens and placing them in a more favourable position at the south-west corner of the town, on the Pechnabran hill, where they dominated the walls. There again, they broke down the defences. But Duras’s assaults on 5th and 6th October were repulsed by the town. On the morning of the 6th, Duras, learning that Burie was moving to engage his forces, raised the
siege, but not before burning all the outlying houses, the Cordeliers convent and the Château de Temniac.

He set out in great haste through Meyrals and Tayac in the direction of Périgueux, but never reached this city. On the 9th, Montluc caught him by surprise on the plains of Vergt and crushed his army. The carnage was terrible. The peasants joined in and 6,000 Huguenots were killed in the surrounding woods. No quarter was given. The remainder of Duras’s Huguenots fled in disarray, and when Duras reached Orleans he had only 5,000 men, completely broken in strength, hope and valour. The three days he had wasted under the walls of Sarlat had cost the Huguenot party half an army and its first defeat of the war.

A week after the bloody defeat at Vergt, Samson, François and I were sitting in Escorgol’s room in the gatehouse late one afternoon, listening to him weave one of his Provençal tales. But though our watchman told a good tale in a strong, sonorous
langue d’oc
accent (a bit different from our Périgordian tongue), I could see quite well that my elder brother was listening with but one ear, especially when a tripping little step could be heard above our heads, separated from us by a mere inch of chestnut ceiling which, in his hurry to finish, Faujanet had so roughly laid that you could see light through the planks. I cast a malicious glance at Samson, but innocent as he still was, putting his nights to the same use that Barberine did (I cannot think to whom, save the Devil, I owe such thanks that my guardian angels in the tower slept so soundly), Samson never took his eyes off Escorgol, all ears to his tale and his eyebrows knitting quizzically whenever some Provençal word bewildered him.

Beside the great fireplace—for on winter nights our watchman would need a good fire to keep him awake—a spiral stone staircase
opened into the wall leading to the floor above, so twisted and narrow that the furniture destined for Diane and her chambermaid had to be hoisted through their window. Their fireplace was on the north side, set exactly above ours, the two flues joined before exiting through the stone roof. According to my father’s orders, a blazing fire burned in the fireplace above us, and if you listened closely (as François was doing) you could hear the whistling and crackling of the burning logs.

The spiral staircase was separated from the first floor by two solid-oak doors furnished with heavy bolts, one on the first floor and one at our level, but the latter was now open, and we could see the first steps winding round the central stone pillar, well lit by a pretty little window just out of sight around the curve, so that all we could see of it was the light it shed on the handsome ochre steps that Jonas had cut. I remember that, sitting as I was, on a stool, leaning against the stone wall and listening to Escorgol, my eye, wandering about the room, often lingered on this shining, sweetly mysterious enclosure, where the steps wound around the pillar right up to the bolted oak door which enclosed our captive, whom we’d never seen except from afar at her window. As for me, I could enjoy the pleasures of my imagination in all this, but I could see it was a different story altogether for poor François, who, as little Hélix said, was already “smitten and trapped”. With mournful eyes, and trembling lips, he stared fixedly at the luminous stairs set in the wall as if they were the forbidden entrance to the Garden of Eden.

Escorgol suddenly stopped and, closing his eyes, said, “What ho! I hear someone!” I jumped up and ran to the narrow window overlooking the machicolations and searched the dusty road curving away towards the les Beunes farm from the gatehouse. I could spy nothing, and, other than occasional birdsong, could hear nothing. Samson came up beside me and also lent an ear. Nevertheless
Escorgol, who had seized the blunderbuss beside his bed, closed his eyes again and then, immediately putting the weapon back in its place, said, “It’s someone coming alone and barefoot.” Having said this, he came up to the window to have a look for himself over our heads at the still empty road. François did not budge an inch, remaining seated in his chair lost not in his
thoughts
, but only in one.

At the far end of the road as it emerged from les Beunes, a head appeared, then a torso and finally the whole body. By her step there could be no doubt that it was a wench. As she approached I was struck by the fact that she had so much black hair that you could hardly see her eyes, yet she wore few clothes, her legs and her breasts half visible through her rags—robust and proud enough despite her poverty.

“What do you want, wench?” called Escorgol from the window, watching her with a half-excited, half-defiant air. “If you’re begging, be on your way. Today we give no alms.”

“I’m no beggar,” said the girl boldly. “I’ve come to speak to Jonas the stonecutter for the masters of Mespech.”

“Wait! I recognize you!” I cried leaning out the window. “You’re Sarrazine, the girl the Gypsy captain left us as a hostage four years ago. Uncle de Sauveterre found you a place at la Volperie in Montignac.”

“That’s me, Sarrazine,” she smiled, raising her head as if her name were some sort of title.

“If you know her,” warned Escorgol, handing each of us a dagger, “go down and let her in the side door, but close it quickly once she’s inside and triple bolt it. I’ll remain here on watch.”

I ran down the small spiral staircase on the opposite side of the fireplace from the one just described and which had the same dimensions, except that it was lit only from the arrow slits in the walls fixed there to enable us to kill any attackers who might have
succeeded in breaking down our doors. Samson was at my heels, and as we threw back the three heavy bolts from the side door, he on the right and I on the left, we concealed our daggers behind our backs as my father had taught us to do. I set the chain, which allowed but a small opening of the door, and by this narrow aperture Sarrazine was able to squeeze in by crouching and turning sideways. Once she was through the doorway, I grabbed her roughly by the arm and, placing the point of my dagger at her throat, ordered her to keep still until Samson closed the door. This done, Samson seized her by the other arm and, turning her around, pointed his blade in her back and told her that I was going to search her. Which, returning my dagger to my belt, I did, at first quite carefully, inspecting the wicker basket she was carrying in her hand, and finding it empty. However, at the first frisk, realizing that the few clothes she wore (and these few quite full of holes) could hide no weapon, my search gained in thoroughness what it lost in roughness.

Sarrazine began to giggle and twist and shot me a saucy look from beneath her jet-black hair. “By my faith, young Master,” she laughed with a raucous voice, “you’ve grown quite up in four years, I’ll warrant, judging by the way you’re inspecting me! Tell your red-headed brother not to poke my back so hard.” And still laughing and struggling in our grip she announced, “I bear no other arms than those that make men’s perdition.”

“Ah but these you bear aplenty!” I rejoined, giving her a look that made her struggle even more.

“Sheathe your knife, Samson, and raise the portcullis,” I said, holding Sarrazine by the arm, not out of any necessity but because her firm, cool flesh was so pleasing to my fingers and because I was so moved by the novelty of her arrival at a time when we were all so lugubriously shut up in Mespech by the troubles of the time and the decree that made us all outlaws. For there was no question of our being able to leave our
walled enclosure, not even to go to Sarlat, where the most avid of the papists now held sway.

The portcullis was raised, then lowered. We gave a reassuring sign to Escorgol, who watched us enviously from his window—my brother François now being his sole audience, if he was listening at all. I did not hesitate long over whether to lead Sarrazine to Sauveterre or to Jean de Siorac, immediately deciding in favour of the latter, knowing what a sour face the older man would make at this wench and what pleasure she would bring my father. I also calculated that he would let us stay for his conversation with her. I then made sure that she was clean under her ragged garments and her dusty feet, that her hair was washed and her breath sweet-smelling so that she would in no way offend my father’s sensitive nose.

I thus ushered the maid into my father’s library and told him who she was. “Ah! Greetings Sarrazine! I’ve often heard news of you these last four years!” said Jean de Siorac rising to meet her, and enveloping the young woman with his blue-eyed gaze from which the sadness momentarily took flight. “And what brings you here?” he added with his old gaiety.

“To complain, My Lord,” replied Sarrazine, making a deep curtsey, her ragged shirt falling open to her waist, a spectacle I did not miss a whit of, nor my father either, I suspect. And she added, lowering her eyes: “Your stonecutter, Jonas, has had his way with me.”

“What’s this?” gasped my father, pretending to frown. “But this is a capital crime! And demands the gallows! And where did this happen? On the road? By hill and dale?”

“In his cave,” affirmed Sarrazine with a hypocritical wink.

“And what were you doing in his cave, my poor woman?” said Jean de Siorac.

“I came to see his wolf, hearing what a marvel it was that he’d tamed her.”

“The marvel is,” laughed my father, “that you walked five leagues barefoot from Montignac to Jonas’s cave just to see this wolf. Did Jonas invite you there?”

“No, indeed, My Lord. I’d not laid eyes on him since he untied me from the pole where the Gypsy captain had left me. And yet when he saw me in his cave he was very nice to me.”

“So I’ll warrant,” said my father.

“He gave me a drink of goat’s milk, and since I was tired and his wolf was asleep he put my head on her flank and told me to pet her. Which I did. Then he stretched out beside me and I said, ‘But you’ve also got beautiful fur on your chest, Jonas.’ And with my other hand I caressed him. And with all that caressing of those two hides, with the wolf moaning sweetly beneath me and Jonas staring at me with his two eyes big as moons, after a while, by some strange magic, I found I was no longer a virgin.”