The Brethren

by Robert Merle

  “But, alas, one that had little lasting effect,” said Caumont. “Despite your own moderation, Monsieur de La Boétie, and even your sympathies for our cause, you were not able to prevent the massacre of thirty of our people scarcely a month ago at the Orioles temple in Cahors. And is not the death of a man infinitely more deplorable than the destruction of statues, relics and crosses?”

  “Indeed,” agreed La Boétie, “but don’t forget that an investigation is under way in Cahors. The queen mother has sent two commissioners for this purpose. And was it not a mortal sin, Monsieur de Caumont, that your own people committed in killing the old Baron de Fumel in his chateau?”

  “But I was not there and had nothing to do with it!” snapped Caumont, flushing with anger. “And surely you are aware that the Baron de Fumel provoked his Protestant subjects by outlawing reformed services in his domains.”

  “There are so many rumours!” exclaimed La Boétie. “Why, Monsieur de Montluc, who as you know shares with Monsieur de Burie the supervision of Guyenne, even claims that you yourself, Caumont, secretly support the Huguenot sedition in the Agenais and Périgord regions.”

  Geoffroy de Caumont leapt to his feet, knocking his chair over backwards. “And who is this Montluc?” he cried, instinctively grasping the handle of his sword. “A creature of François de Guise! A man who believes in neither God nor the Devil, and who serves only his own interests while claiming to serve the king. And isn’t it true, Monsieur de La Boétie, that he is about to welcome Felipe II’s Spanish infantry?”

  “’Tis so, alas,” confirmed La Boétie, “all the more reason for prudence on your part.”

  “I beseech you, Caumont,” said my father, “pick up your chair and pray be seated. La Boétie is our friend and seeks only to give you good and timely advice.”

  There was a long silence. Caumont sat down again, sombre and tight-lipped. La Boétie looked solemnly at him, shook his head and said after some thought: “Monsieur de Caumont, please do not take what I am about to tell you badly, but your family goes too far. Your brother-in-law, the Baron de Biron, is said to have given asylum to seditious Huguenots. Your elder brother François has transformed the church in Milandes into a reformed temple and thereby deprived his Catholic subjects of their place of worship. Montluc has reported all this to Catherine de’ Medici, who was much displeased by this usurpation, as she was by the death of Fumel, whom she will publicly mourn. Since the regent is already much alarmed by these tumultuous events, it would be unwise, Caumont, to give her the impression that our Huguenots of Guyenne are a seditious lot and dream of rebelling against the king’s laws.”

  Caumont, obviously irritated, opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of it, and as he persisted in his silence, La Boétie said amicably but firmly: “Alas, My Lord, I know all too well that the Roman Church is horribly corrupted by infinite abuses. I do not doubt your sincere desire for reform. But what can you hope to gain through force? Repression. Montluc has the means to do it. By nature he is inclined to bloodshed. And Monsieur de Burie will not be able to restrain him for ever. What’s worse, the Protestants’ position in Guyenne is morally weak: they demand from the king freedom for their cult, while, in areas under their control, they themselves offer none to those who share the king’s beliefs.” La Boétie paused, and then added in the most pressing tone, “I beseech you, Caumont, do not fall into such extremism. Be not so harsh or so violent. Make your peace with the Catholics. Don’t go off on your own. You can see the extreme desolation and the dismemberment of the state such a spirit of partisanship has brought to the kingdom. If these disastrous tumults to continue, I fear the worst.”

  To this urgent speech, Caumont made no response, but instead sat stiffly in his chair, his eyes fixed angrily on the floor, maintaining a sullen silence. La Boétie changed the subject, complimenting the Brethren on the evident prosperity of Mespech, and after several minutes of such banter traded disconsolate looks with Siorac and Sauveterre and took his leave.

  Here I must say a few words about the massacre of the Protestants at the Orioles temple in Cahors. Although there were more victims than at the massacre of Vassy, the latter is better known to the French for reasons that we shall see later on. But the tumultuous events at Cahors set the tone for what was to happen several months later at Vassy, and in so many other places where the murder of Protestants in the first months of 1562 served as a prelude to the frightful civil wars which ravaged the kingdom of France right up until the crowning of Henri IV.

  In the year 1561, on 16th November, the Calvinists of Cahors were assembled for religious services in the Orioles temple, belonging to Raymond de Gontaut, lord of Cabrerets. It was a particularly mild day for that time of year, and the windows of the temple were wide open. As the reformers were singing the Psalms of David, a great crowd of people in a burial procession, led by Soubirou, the curate of Notre-Dame, passed under the windows, loudly chanting the funeral service.

  Although the Psalms of David and the priests’ canticles celebrated the same God, Catholics and Protestants alike felt insulted by this juxtaposition. The reformers, not to be outdone, sang louder. The Catholics did likewise. From street and windows, insults were soon exchanged; insults gave way to threats and threats to blows. The populace, rushing en masse to the scene, and goaded by some of the more fanatical Catholics, broke down the doors to the Orioles temple, and rushing on the “heretics” assembled there to “hear the word of the Devil” massacred thirty of their number.

  As for the murder of the Baron de Fumel, it was a revolt conceived by his subjects under the guise of religion. So great was their hatred of their old master that, having stormed the chateau, they tore off his clothes and whipped him to death—and not content with his death, they filled his inert body with a rain of bullets and dagger wounds, everyone seeking a share of this savagery until the butcher of Libos went so far as to cut off his head with his knife.

  The wise counsel offered to Geoffroy de Caumont by Étienne de La Boétie on the subject of such tumultuous bloodletting was not lost on the Brethren. But then it is also true that this counsel was in keeping with their own inclinations. My father was then fifty-six years old, Sauveterre sixty-one, and being both of a mind to preserve the wealth they had so arduously acquired, neither sought to jeopardize it through any excess. And so they never touched the church at Marcuays, nor even the chapel at Mespech, but left intact its crosses and statue of the Virgin (much admired by my father, for it was of painted wood and quite naively sculpted). Better yet, not wishing to run the risk of having my mother escorted on Sundays to the church in Marcuays by two Huguenot soldiers, which undoubtedly would have provoked some reaction by the more fanatical Catholics, they continued to pay five sols a month to Pincers to come and say Mass at the chateau for the sole benefit of my mother, who, dressed to the hilt in all her Sunday finery, went alone to the chapel, standing stiffly in proud meditation, holding in her hand as an emblem her Roman missal, without ever opening it.

  After Mass, the Brethren invited Pincers to have a drink in my father’s study and made pleasant conversation about the weather and the crops. Pincers, whose great nose protruded with a violent red glow, miser, thief and drunkard that he was, nevertheless was not entirely lacking in finesse. He appreciated the weighty advantage, in these troubled times so full of danger for priests, of maintaining good relations with the Huguenot lords of the domain, and downplayed the question of heresy in his sermons, never permitting the slightest attack, public or private, direct or veiled, against Mespech. And so, in this ocean of tumults that the kingdom had become, peace reigned in Taniès, Sireil and Marcuays. And when later the Huguenots gained control of Montignac and tried to force their iconoclastic beliefs on the church at Taniès, Siorac, his soldiers at his heels, nearly killed his horse getting to the church in order to dissuade them.

  But there was danger in this very moderation, as we shall see—moderates in both camps being despised by extremists on either side.


  Throughout this period, an underground papist idolatry continued to flourish at Mespech, especially among the women, under the cover of lip-service Huguenotry. I discovered all this through strange circumstances, bedded as I was with little Hélix in Barberine’s enormous bed, now that she had gone off home for reasons I’ve already explained. In the middle of one very dark night, little Hélix began shivering so much she nearly shook the bed.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked, half-asleep. “Are you trembling?”

  “Yes,” she confessed, “I can’t help it.”

  “Why not?” No answer. “Are you feverish?” I gasped, pulling away.

  “No,” she answered in a voice suffocated with fear. “But I think it’s a great sin we are committing. Every night the Devil comes over us, and it’s all your fault.”

  “My fault, silly!” I said, fully awake now. “How so? And who started it?”

  “I did,” she admitted ruefully, “but you make me sink into temptation, being such a cute little rascal.”

  “You should have resisted.”

  “And how could I, a poor peasant girl and you the son of the baron?”

  “You must be joking, you vixen!” I said, irritated. “Son of a baron I may be, but it wasn’t long ago that you were pinching my backside black and blue. And as for you know what, you taught me everything I know.”

  “But now I’m all repentant,” she said, sobbing and crying hot tears.

  I made sure her tears were real (knowing her to be so mischievous and the night being so dark) by drawing my finger under her eyes and finding it all wet. I was greatly moved by her chagrin, feeling as I did such deep friendship for her beyond the obvious attraction of our nocturnal games. “Hélix,” I said, “if this is how you feel, then we should stop altogether.”

  “Oh no! No! No!” she cried. “Especially now that you’re going on eleven and getting to be a man, thank God!” And seizing my head passionately between her two thin little arms, she thrust it between her sweet breasts, which doubly reduced me to silence given that I was now effectively gagged and because I loved my gagging, despite my raw youth.

  But she soon released me and started again to cry and tremble. “Oh I’m done for, my pretty little man,” she wept, her tears dropping on my chest, “when I think every day that I am going to burn in hell and horrible devils will skewer me in the flames with their pitchforks, now on this side, now on the other, so that I’ll be baked evenly all over, poor little Hélix, who loves God and Holy Jesus so much!”

  “But no one can foretell who will be damned,” I said, more secure in my Huguenot theology than she was in hers.

  “Oh yes they do!” she sobbed, blind to such nuances. “I know I’ll burn. I can already feel it in my bones. Oh if only I were as old as you, then I could claim, like la Maligou did, that as a poor serving girl I was forced to submit to my lord’s feudal rights. Then it wouldn’t be my fault and there’d be no sin.”

  “And a nice lie that would be, Hélix! If you’ve forgotten all the tricks you started with, I’m going to make you remember them.”

  “Oh no! I won’t listen, you rascal! Go away!” she said, pushing me away. “You enchanted me with your pretty golden hair which makes you look like a golden écu! But it’s all trickery and false appearances. You’re the Devil incarnate!”

  “I am not and you know it!” I spouted. “Here is the Devil!” I said, touching the various parts of her body. “And if you dare repeat that I am the Devil, I’ll go sleep in Samson’s bed and you’ll never see me in yours again.”

  “Oh no, no no!” she whined, immediately seizing me in her arms and squeezing me to her violently. “Don’t go away, I beg you, Pierre de Siorac! Or I’d be so unhappy I’d throw myself off the tower into the moat.” This threat did not move me. I’d too often heard my mother say it, and there wasn’t a woman in Mespech who didn’t go around repeating it after her. And yet I consoled little Hélix and gradually her tears ceased along with her sobs. And I thought her aslumber again, when she said in a piteous voice: “The truth is I’m too small for such a great sin.”

  “But what can you do,” I reasoned naively, “since you don’t want to give it up?” (Nor, in truth did I.)

  “I know!” she cried, sitting up suddenly in the bed. “We’ll both go and pray to the Holy Virgin to intercede for us with the Divine Child!”

  “Pray to Mary?” I gasped indignantly. “But that would be pure idolatry! And for sure we’d be damned then!”

  “For sure not! My mother secretly prays to her every day, and la Maligou and Little Sissy as well. And so do I!”

  “What are you telling me?”

  “The truth. La Maligou has set up a little altar to the Holy Virgin in the corner of the granary, with a beautiful image of Her and dried flowers. And it’s there we go to pray one after another, kissing the feet of the image, and always someone to keep watch.”

  “Does my mother know?”

  “Oh no! We don’t dare tell her.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because when she gets angry she can’t hold her tongue.”

  “And when do you all do this?” I asked, utterly amazed.

  “When the men have retired into the library for the evening.”

  Certainly the moment was well chosen. In the great hall during the evening, there was always such a lot of coming and going, with the women engaged in housework and the men sitting around the fire roasting chestnuts over the coals and occupied in lively and loud discussion in the absence of their masters, that it was easy to sneak away without arousing suspicion.

  “I shan’t pray to Mary,” I said resolutely. “Neither here nor in the loft. But go ahead, if that’s what you want.”

  “But if I do it alone, it won’t help,” protested little Hélix. “We have to pray together, since we’ve sinned together.”

  “And start in again together!” I thought to myself, half serious, half in jest, for I could sense the weakness of her reasoning. But, at her request, I promised to keep silent about their secret cult of Mary in our Huguenot stronghold. And I kept my promise, though not without a few pangs of conscience, my loyalty to my father pricking and stinging me. But I was too afraid that the Brethren would dismiss Barberine and little Hélix not to seal my lips on the matter.

  Étienne de La Boétie had done well to warn Geoffroy de Caumont about Montluc, for after hesitating for some time between the Roman Church and our own, this man had ended up choosing Catholicism because of his desire to advance his own fortunes at court, his greed to fill his coffers and the frightful pleasure he took in spilling blood. Physically, he was a dry, bony man, with an emaciated face, high and prominent cheekbones, angry eyebrows and pinched lips. Hardly a fanatic, he killed men not for love of any cause, but for political ends, out of resentment and for fun.

  It was at Saint-Mézard in the Agenais region that, in February 1562, he gave the first measure of his cruelty. There was a small uprising of Huguenots in that village against Sire de Rouillac who had tried to keep his reformed subjects from breaking the icons in the church of Saint-Mézard and from stealing the chalices (for in these affairs looting always played some part). But he paid dearly for this, for the people rose up and besieged his house. However, he was luckier than Fumel, and did not pay with his life, being rescued just in time by neighbouring noblemen. But great bitterness and angry words ensued on both sides, especially concerning a large stone cross in the cemetery which some of the Huguenots had broken.

  Montluc swept down on Saint-Mézard with his troops at dawn on 20th February, but since none of his men knew the place all of the Huguenots were able to escape, with the exception of a man named Verdier, two other devils and a young, eighteen-year-old deacon, who were all seized. They were bound and taken to the cemetery where Montluc, followed by his executioner, brought them before the two consuls of Saint-Mézard and a nobleman of the town.

  “Traitors,” scowled Montluc, “is it true, as this gentleman and these two consuls cl
aim, that when they told you the king would be displeased if you broke that cross, you answered, ‘What king? We are the kings. Your king is a little kinglet of dung. We’ll put sticks to him and teach him how to earn a living like other honest folk’?”

  “Oh, Monsieur,” said Verdier, “pity for a poor sinner.”

  “Miscreant,” answered Montluc, “how dare you seek mercy from me when you have no respect for your king?” So saying, he pushed him rudely down onto the fragments of the cross, ordering his executioner: “Strike, villain!” Whereupon the man beheaded Verdier right there on the cross. Two others were strung up from the elm in the cemetery. Which left the deacon. Montluc demonstrated on his behalf a strange sort of mercy: given his youth, he got off with a mere whipping—which lasted only until he died beneath the blows. And it was thus that four of the king’s subjects were summarily executed without arrest, judges or trial.

  In Cahors, meanwhile, the two civil commissioners sent by the queen mother conducted their inquest on the massacre at the Orioles temple. They indicted fifteen Catholics, whom they sent to the stake. Montluc immediately hurried to Fumel, and, passing through Sainte-Livrade on his way, was brought six Huguenots, whom he strung up without lingering over them. But as he was joined at Fumel by Monsieur de Burie, he had to follow a few more formalities and sent for two counsellors of the seneschalty of Agen to judge Baron de Fumel’s murderers. Which was done with great haste, and nineteen Huguenots were hanged.

  From Fumel, Montluc travelled to Cahors to intimidate the two civil commissioners sent by the queen mother, who had been so bold as to imprison Monsieur de Vieule, the canon of Cahors, since they believed he had abetted the Orioles massacre. Scarcely had he arrived there than he confronted Geoffroy de Caumont, who had come to complain about him to Burie in the presence of a large assembly.