The Brotherhood of Book Hunters (23 page)

Two thieves were crucified on Golgotha, by the sides of the Savior. Two criminals, just like Villon. If not for the sweet Lord, then at least for those two a good peasant must take offense and show all these sanctimonious zealots what a bold Coquillard was made of.

A
woman lay moaning amid the smoking ruins. She was struggling with an invisible demon, clawing at the air with her bloodstained fingers, her legs shaking convulsively. Around her lay corpses covered in rubble and flies. Some had been dismembered. Hanged men swung from the branches of a big oak. One of them wore a sign nailed to his chest: “Louis is my King.” The village dogs were fighting over pieces of flesh. Colin and his men moved forward cautiously. The pillagers were surely not far, busy dividing the loot. Doubtless mercenaries riding up toward Burgundy to fight for the enemies of Louis XI.

Colin grabbed the woman by the back of her neck and forced her to drink. One of the muleteers went to search in the barns for food. There was not even a sack of hay left for the animals. Only the church was intact, pews and prie-dieus neatly lined up facing the altar, but brass candlesticks and silver chalices had disappeared. Little by little, grimy children emerged from the communal forest. Colin would have liked to stop them approaching. But the younger ones, more alert, were already arriving, looking for their mothers amid the ruins, knowing perfectly well that no men had survived the massacre. An agent of the Brotherhood was bending over a well. He had let down the bucket, but a dull sound had stopped its descent. A heap of bodies was blocking the bottom.

An acrid stench filled everyone's nostrils. And although most had never smelled it before, they all guessed that this odor was the bitter stink of death. Up above their heads, sparrows were chirping gaily in the trees. In the middle of a field of daisies, a baby donkey was grazing nonchalantly, oblivious to the folly of men.

Colin did not feel very safe. He got back in the saddle and curtly gave the order to set off again as soon as possible. It was only once he reached the top of a hillock that he turned. The village had disappeared behind a thick rampart of chestnut and plane trees. Only the flight of crows marked the cursed spot with a black circle in the sky.

 

The main road between Valence and Lyon was filled with a rabble of cavalrymen and foot soldiers on their way to join the forces of the league. In the rear, a swarm of beggars circled the canteen wagons like seagulls in the wake of a ship. Colin had planned to mingle with the peddlers who had come to sell their goods to the soldiers: kegs of wine, grindstones, bottles of elixir, fresh linen, boxwood rosaries, bridle decorations, playing cards, and even a few pieces of information about the enemy's movements. But now, dreading to be searched, he decided to take less frequented paths, at the risk of breaking the axles of the wagons.

They would have to avoid Burgundy, the fiefdom of Charles the Bold, in order to get to Paris. Colin hesitated to pass through the Auvergne, whose impoverished minor lords robbed the convoys that crossed their lands. He thought of turning east, in the direction of Savoy, in the vague hope of meeting one of the detachments sent by the Sforzas to help Louis XI. In any case, there was no question of going through Lyon. Colin had not expected to find his homeland so torn apart. He was distraught. But it was in the confident tones of a general that he gave the order to turn off and head for the mountains.

 

Among the young men from Jerusalem, laughter had given way to a confused silence. They were not unfamiliar with violence and war. Each had lost at least one of his family in this kind of massacre, whether it was a close relative from Samaria or a distant cousin in the Jewish quarter of some city. It was not so much the heaps of corpses that troubled them as the strange feeling of guilt, or shame, whose horror slyly undermined those it spared.

The swaying of the wagons cradled the travelers, gradually calming their rancor. The luxuriance of the countryside dazzled them. All that greenery! All those rivers! Willows caressed the waters, filtering the current through their fingertips, like dreamers sitting on the bank. The undergrowth was carpeted with moss and bracken. The chestnut trees collapsed beneath the weight of their foliage. The cornfields waved in the wind. By the end of summer, even Galilee seemed unpleasant. And the Jordan, lined with crimson brambles, was no wider than a stream, whereas here the earth itself was damp. It stuck to your feet instead of burning your soles. But as soon as it started to drizzle, the young men complained. And after an hour of gray skies, they all longed for the sun.

 

The noise of clanking rose from the valley. The mules reared and neighed. Horses answered them from a distance, still hidden by the edge of the plateau. The mules' hooves struck the stones, sending them rolling down the slope. Out of breath from the climb, they snorted through their nostrils. Raucous voices urged them on. Then, all at once, a squadron appeared, blocking the horizon. These weren't the king's troops. Their crudely embroidered banner, creased and dirty, bore the arms of some obscure local baron.

Colin looked in vain for a path by which to escape, bushes to hide in. It was too late. The soldiers were already surrounding the convoy. Without dismounting, their commander inspected the crates, springing the lids with a single stroke of his sword. Colin's men held themselves ready to leap on the adversary. One of the muleteers jumped to the ground and ran off into the forest. He collapsed after a few yards, pierced by an arrow.

The commander seemed puzzled. What were all these books doing here? Colin approached, held out his hand, and told him how pleased he was to encounter these men in uniform rather than brigands. The other man did not reply. Colin explained that this cargo was intended for the bishopric of Dijon, but he had no documents on him to prove it. The officer did not seem convinced. He looked at the sturdy, somewhat dark complexioned young men sitting on the benches of the wagons. They did not look either like novices or inoffensive carters, nor did they lower their eyes when he stared at them.

Sensing the mayhem that was about to ensue, Colin hastened to point out that he was an excellent purveyor of bibles and missals, and declared himself ready to offer his services to any pious knight anxious to adorn his chapel with the best sacred texts. Irritated by so much talk, the officer pushed Colin away. He thought for a moment, then gave the order to confiscate the shipment.

In one bound, the young warriors of the Brotherhood threw themselves on the soldiers with the fury of wildcats, yelling, hitting, their daggers slicing through flesh. The officer fell to the ground, his throat cut. But his men continued to fight hard. None ran away. Colin found such bravery surprising. The reason soon became apparent to him. As he was gradually retreating toward the bushes, a second detachment appeared, much larger than the first, and immediately joined in the fight. Blades cut through the air, blood spurted. One of the wagons was overturned. Dozens of books were strewn in the mud, trampled by men and beasts. The skirmish was brief and without mercy. After a few minutes, the din of weapons faded, giving way to the muffled groans of the wounded. A young Jew lay among the torn books, his dead eyes staring at a page of Plato's
Protagoras
. A mule grazed on the scattered sheets of a treatise on astronomy. A surgeon began bandaging the wounds of the soldiers with pieces of parchment and paper.

The sun was still high in the sky. Crows were gathering on the branches, waiting patiently for the survivors to leave the battlefield and abandon to them the pieces of flesh strewn over the grass. Huddled beneath a stone, a toad croaked, annoyed at the commotion that had disturbed the peace of its domain. Some way below, under the cover of the foliage, his back stooped, Colin hurtled down the slope as fast as his legs would carry him.

A
scorpion buried its eggs in the sand then scuttled away, its pincers in the air. Aisha stood aside to let it run by. She was walking along the white bank, not far from the place where Lot's wife, turning back toward Sodom, had been turned into a pillar of salt. No wind was blowing. The stones were boiling in the sun. The shadow of a sparrow hawk striped the surface of the water. Everything here took place against a background of silence. Aisha knew how much François hated this dead calm. This morning, he had gamely sung her a poem, but his voice had been hoarse with melancholy. It was the voice of a caged bird. He needed the din of the crowd, the noises of the street, the incessant fanfare of swearing and laughter. Would he also turn back in the end, like Lot's wife?

And if he did, how could Aisha blame him? François had crossed the immensity of the dunes without complaint, letting their kisses moisten his lips. Would she have been capable of following him blindly through the grimy outskirts of a big city? Sooner or later, her master of wind and sand would catch up with her. She would be too hungry for light. And for freedom, just like François.

 

Up there, in the cave, François and Eviatar were bent over a lectern. Eviatar was translating a text by Luke. François could hardly believe his ears. Even though he had never set foot outside the Holy Land, the youth spoke wonderful French. He had learned it from the monks. Since his earliest years, he had been studying the language with the sole aim of deepening his understanding of the Torah. Like many, François was unaware that the Hebrew Bible was strewn with commentaries in good old French. For several centuries, Jews throughout the world, whether they were from Spain or Russia, Constantinople or Chandernagore, had based their reading of the Bible on the interpretation by Rashi, a rabbi from Troyes. Whenever he had not found a Hebrew word allowing him to express a nuance of the sacred text with enough precision, this son of the Champagne region had gladly turned to the subtleties of the French language. It was the better to grasp the master's thought that Eviatar had been eager to extend his knowledge of the language in which the rabbi had expressed himself with so much eloquence and accuracy, just as a learned man learns Greek the better to read Aristotle. And so it was not for his martial skills that Eviatar had been chosen to accompany François to the desert, but in order to be his translator and secretary, assisting him in the mission the Brotherhood would entrust to him.

 

The friendship between the two men, born out of the long road they had traveled together, was consolidated as they studied. Eviatar continued to guide François, drawing him by the hand along new paths. For these commentaries on the Bible were as tortuous as
wadis
. And, like them, they seemed to lead nowhere. They twisted and turned, tirelessly digging deep into the arid rock of the Law. The controversies of the sages were as difficult to follow as the tracks of gazelles amid the rocky ground, their questions as thorny as cactus needles. The sweet fruit of wisdom could only be plucked after many scratches, plunging your hand ever deeper into the branches. François was not accustomed to these winding ravines. He came from the green meadows of Picardy, from the valleys of Touraine, where there was always a steeple on the horizon, where shrines and the statues of saints reassured the lost traveler. He amused Eviatar by revealing to him the secrets of other sages—auctioneers, poachers, hunters of wood pigeons—who also had things to say. Eviatar and François were struggling now with a text by Luke, wearing out the soles of their shoes, scraping the gravel, strangely united. Both of them, the Jew and the gentile, expected much more of their God than help and mercy. They called him to account. François was surprised nevertheless by the young Talmudist's choice.

 

Of all the apostles, Luke was the one who had said most about women. As a physician, he was better informed about them than his contemporaries. Even though he had no doubt at all that Mary had been a virgin, he did not accord this a great deal of importance. For him, it was not the act of procreation, however miraculous, that made the mother of Christ glorious. It was her role as counselor and guide, and not as vestal. “Mary treasured all these things, and pondered them in her heart.”

These “things” were doubts, questions the defenders of the dogma forbade themselves from asking. It was with an audacious commentary on the writings of Luke, a fake that François would compose himself, that the Brotherhood hoped to spur those in England, in Prague, and in the Palatinate who were trying to reform the Church. Jerusalem saw the Hussites of Bohemia and the prelates of Oxford as much more reliable allies than the humanists. Their doctrines were not at odds with the Law of Moses. That was why these fervent Christians were as harassed and persecuted as the Jews by the Inquisition.

The Brotherhood could have asked one of its own scholars to produce a perfectly acceptable pastiche. But its commander considered that only a born Christian, also a victim of the power of the priests, would be able to speak to the men who were currently fighting the tyranny of the Papacy. That was why had therefore long searched for a suitable voice among recalcitrant monks, dissident priests, and mystics of all kinds. He would never have thought that a Parisian bishop would have handed him one on a platter—and with the tacit agreement of the King of France, to boot.

François was reluctant to dip his pen in a font and get it damaged for the sake of a theological dispute that didn't concern him in the least. Especially not for the benefit of those who were keeping him prisoner. Nevertheless, after giving it much thought, he had decided that this might be an opportunity to be seized. The opportunity to settle a few scores while gaining the trust of his jailers. After all, wasn't Jerusalem the patron he had always dreamt of? A discreet protector who did not demand that he submit, but on the contrary, that he be as insubordinate as possible.

François bent and, his nose close to the page, started to scribble a few notes. “‘My soul doth magnify the Lord,' says Luke.” François scratched the paper with his alert handwriting. He knew that these first lines would be conveyed to the head of the Brotherhood. “‘He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble.”' Eviatar craned his neck, eager to read the commentary. He did not see the grin spreading slowly across François's face. Exiled against his will in a distant land, François was rotting in a cave, under guard. And yet he had never felt so free.