The Brethren

by Robert Merle

“Pierre,” said my father at length, in a feeble and scratchy voice, “your mother is dying and has asked to see you. I shall not follow you into her room. She wishes to see you alone.”

  When he rose his bearing and attitude suddenly appeared weak, bent and aged, and, worse still, unusually ill-kempt for someone normally so clean and well presented. This sight afflicted me almost more than the news I’d just heard. As if every movement had become unbearable, he gestured towards the door with but a slight wave of his hand, and walking past him, pale, sweating, my eyes cast down (so much did his weakness make me afraid and ashamed), I entered my mother’s room.

  My mother’s strength calmed me, though even my young eyes could discern that death was written across her brow in her sunken orbits, hollow cheeks and feverish and bewildered eyes. But she was made up with all her usual colours, her hair curled with utmost care and her forehead haughty as usual.

  “Sit down, Pierre,” she whispered in a weak and hurried voice. “I have not much strength left nor much time. My mind is wandering and my head’s in a cloud.”

  I sat down next to her on the little stool, where, I supposed, my father had spent many hours for the last week, eating his heart out watching her.

  “Pierre,” said Isabelle, “when I met Jean de Siorac, I was wearing a medallion of the Virgin around my neck. I want you to accept it from me and to wear it for the rest of your life, out of love for me.”

  I remained mute, stuck dumb by the gravity of what she dared ask of me.

  “Pierre! Pierre!” she cried with feverish impatience, raising herself on the pillows. “I don’t have much time left. Don’t put off answering. Will you accept?”

  “I accept,” I said, “but shouldn’t you give this present to my elder brother?”

  “No,” she hissed, falling back onto her pillow and closing her eyes. “François has no character. He wouldn’t have worn it.”

  I saw her closed left hand advancing towards me and I seized it, opened it and found the medallion and its chain. “Put it on,” she said, opening her eyes. I unbuttoned my doublet and obeyed, having, as I did, the impression of committing such a dastardly action against my father that I should never again, from this moment forward, examine my soul.

  Isabelle blinked her poor hollow eyes, so feverish and already so bewildered, and she said in a faint voice, “I cannot see it. Is it around your neck?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Will you wear it as I have told you?”

  “Yes.” She made a small, weak gesture, yet still imperious, to give me my leave, and as I was about to turn away, I saw her suddenly give me a look and a smile that were no longer those of a mother, but of a woman. The smile bathed her moribund face with tenderness and illuminated an unforgettable instant, as she said to me with an extraordinarily sweet but tenuous voice, already, it seemed, from the other world: “Adieu, Jean.”

  8

  ISABELLE WAS BURIED, as she had requested, beneath the choir of the small chapel at Mespech. On the ochre stone slab that covered her coffin, Jonas undertook to engrave the following words dictated by my father:

  ISABELLE, BARONESS OF SIORAC

  1531–1562

  Jonas wanted to make an engraving that would resist the erosion of time, and for two long weeks, wherever we were, we could hear the funereal sound of his hammer, striking his chisel. Jean de Siorac decided to leave the chapel exactly as it was when my mother heard Mass there. So its cross, its icons, its ornaments and its wooden statue of the Virgin remained. He ordered a double lock on the door and kept the key safely in his study. As for our reformed Church, it continued to meet as before in the common room.

  My mother’s death pained me but little, and it seemed to me that I should be more afflicted than I was—all the more so since I now realized that I had been her favourite son. But Isabelle had so little consented to know her children, and, despite her great love for them, she had loved them from such a distance that I never felt enough warmth from her to encourage my heart to reach out to meet hers. I faithfully wore her heretical medallion on my chest, hidden by my doublet, but it was only out of fidelity to my sworn word.

  I would have felt truly heartbreaking grief only if I had lost Barberine for ever, but she was back again, distributing among her children her tender looks and sweet caresses along with the warblings of sweet nothings that she meted out each evening before blowing out her lamp. She now carried, nestled in her beautiful plump arms, a new nursling, Jacquou, whom my father had sworn to raise since she had borne him expressly to nurse Isabelle’s child. And along with Jacquou, Annet now clung to her skirts, already a toddler, yet still continuing to nurse, as was the custom of the region.

  Except for Barberine’s return, there was little change in the household of Mespech after the death of Isabelle. Alazaïs was no longer needed as chambermaid, but our tall Huguenot shined with such rare virtues that the Brethren kept her on to work in the house and fields, and, if need be, for the defence of the chateau, the stout virgin worth any soldier’s salt, having quickly learnt to handle a pike and a blunderbuss.

  There came a day when, to our great relief, Jonas’s chisel blows ceased, and our stonecutter emerged from the chapel, bent and covered with stone dust right up to his eyebrows, and asked my father to come see his engraving and tell him if it was satisfactory.

  “’Tis beautiful work, Jonas,” said Jean de Siorac, “but why did you engrave it so deeply?”

  “The stone is handsome, but too soft, and it wears fast.”

  My father breathed a deep sigh.

  “So you have done your best to preserve the memory of Isabelle de Siorac on this earth. But, my poor Jonas, it cannot last. In a few centuries, people will have so trodden on this stone that your beautiful work will be all effaced. And Isabelle will be nothing any more here below, not even a name.”

  At the time, Jonas found no answer to this; but sometime later while at the le Breuil farm, he said to Cabusse, “Nonetheless, Cabusse, in 200 years, they’ll still be able to see my carving. And the passer-by who reads it will maybe say to himself, ‘Thirty-one years old. She died so young, the poor lass.’ And he’ll feel a moment of compassion. And then I won’t have done my work in vain and I’ll be happy.”

  “And just where do you think you’ll be at that moment?” asked Cabusse.

  “Wherever I may be, I’ll be happy.”

  Isabelle buried, my father, who had kept to his room throughout her illness, emerged into the light of day, blinking his red and swollen eyes and clothed from head to toe in black, and this tradition of mourning he maintained until his dying day. He immediately threw himself furiously into his work, and as for work, there was no lack of it.

  The Brethren, as I have said, had undertaken to double the wooden enclosure surrounding the moat with a stone wall out of ladder-reach and surmounted by walkways with battlements. This second curtain was round in shape and built to connect up with a gatehouse, already constructed, a sort of large, square rustic tower two stories high, the ground floor of which contained a portcullis which defended a great oaken double door. This commanded a vaulted passage built directly under the tower. If the explosives of the enemy broke down these doors, they would encounter at the far end of the passageway an iron gate, which they might shake and twist, but they would only be able to do so by exposing themselves, caught as they would be in the weir of the vault, to fire from the arrow loops fixed on each side in the wall and stones hurled down on their heads from trapdoors.

  As for the traps, which until then had been spread over the ground in the enclosure around the moat—a system not without its dangers for the stray cow or bull—they were collected into a circular area between the stone wall and the line of stakes. Anyone scaling and leaping from the wall would thus find himself caught up and badly injured by these.

  It was thanks to Alazaïs that we recruited our nightwatchman, Escorgol, a cousin of hers, it turned out. He resembled her in size, but differed in his gaiety and his songs�
�but especially in a highly unusual feature: nearly blind in his youth, he had suddenly regained his full sight, without the aid of barber or doctor, at the age of thirty—a miracle which, as he said, had made him joyful and would keep him so for the rest of his days, since a man who has spent thirty years at the bottom of a well cannot but be happy to emerge into the light of day.

  From his long sojourn in this twilight, Escorgol had, besides his good nature, gained a most precious quality for a nightwatchman: a remarkably acute sense of hearing. Sitting during the day in the common room with us, he could hear the sound of a horse’s hooves on the Mespech road a full minute before the dogs outside in the enclosure.

  Escorgol had bright brown eyes, a small nose and the lips of a good eater in a round, somewhat squashed face set in a completely bald head. Two enormous pointed ears emerged from this pumpkin, whose lobes shook when he laughed or spoke, which was often, for he was a greater joker and storyteller than any mother’s son in the entire countryside.

  So many cut or uncut stones were carted out of our quarry from le Breuil to Mespech during this period! And so many stones were carried or placed with the bare, chafed hands of adults and small children, men and women, each according to his or her strength! Everyone pitched in, except Coulondre, who, because of his iron arm, drove the carts, la Maligou, busy cooking her pots for everyone’s paunch, and, of course, Barberine, who, besides Jacquou in her arms and Annet clinging to her skirts, still had Cathau’s toddler to care for while Cathau vigorously lent a hand to Cabusse on the scaffolding.

  To be sure, hands were not lacking. The Brethren had hired two journeymen stonecutters to help Jonas, who could not keep up with the demand, often filling the roles of both master builder on the walls and stonemason in the quarry. And when the wheat was harvested and the nuts were gathered, all of our tenant farmers arrived to lend a hand to the rest of our household: Faujanet, Marsal, the Siorac twins, Alazaïs (the equal of two men) and little Hélix (who wasn’t worth a quarter of one, so preoccupied was she with watching them). Their lessons done, the baron’s three rascals and the baron himself, throwing off their doublets, pitched in along with Sauveterre, despite his limp, and even Catherine and Little Sissy, who spent their time searching among the large blocks for flat chips that could be used as wedges between the stones as they were laid.

  As the masters were so near at hand to their servants during this long project, and were drawn even closer by the work they did, everyone took advantage of the situation to deliver some message or other to them. In his discreet, indirect and Périgordian way, Jonas noted, as if in jest, that, as long as they were so engaged, they might as well build him a stone house over his cave while they were at it, so he wouldn’t have to live out his life like a savage. My father did not greet this request ungenerously, and half joking, half in earnest, gave a half-promise that it should be done. But Sauveterre, already dismayed by the expense of the outer wall, turned a deaf ear to such talk.

  In all, there were twenty-five mouths to feed every day and la Maligou, though basically happy to be doing her cooking outside and to see so many people, grumbled about the extra work, especially since Barberine was but little help, given that, the minute she took out one white breast to nurse Jacquou, Annet, as big as he was, immediately set to bawling to have the other, which she immediately granted him, sharing out her inexhaustible supply of milk like the she-wolf of Rome to Romulus and Remus. It was a pretty sight to see Barberine suckled on both sides by such avid little rascals.

  I often paused in my work to watch them. I was moved to the depths of my entrails and a bit jealous to think that in the flower of her eighteenth year she had nursed me, just like these two, I who was now a strapping fellow, learning the martial arts, Latin and the history of the kingdom, as well as, from my father, the secrets of medicine.

  Siorac and Sauveterre knew as well as anyone that, no matter how well fortified, Mespech could never resist a royal army furnished with cannon. They had said as much to the police lieutenant and would have the occasion to repeat it to Monsieur de Salis, the lieutenant general of Périgord, headquartered in Sarlat: as loyal subjects they would never close their doors to the king or to officers of the king.

  But other perils were to be feared. Since the outlawing of the reformers by the Paris parliament, the dregs of the populace, feeling they now had the right to steal and to rape and kill their enemies, had crept out of hiding like woodlice out of a dead log. Brigands and highwaymen, fleecers and vagabonds, beggars and vagrants, emerging from the hovels where they’d been holed up and with religion as their pretext, committed the worst atrocities on the isolated houses of the Huguenots. To be sure, these bands had appeared thus far only in the northern regions of the kingdom, especially in the Anjou and Maine provinces, which they devastated, but with the progress of the civil war they might well descend southward towards Guyenne in search of adventure and new pillaging, where they would find no resistance from Montluc.

  Yet we were confronted with dangers closer to hand, as Jean de Siorac had pointedly informed Guillaume de La Porte. Our neighbour, Bertrand de Fontenac, who resented us because of his father’s banishment, had already provided the proof of his intentions by unleashing the Gypsies on us while my father was fighting under the walls of Calais. It was thus to be feared that, emboldened by the persecutions against us throughout the kingdom, he might again try some treachery against Mespech.

  With our minds thus occupied by our fearsome neighbour, we completed work on our surrounding wall, and Escorgol was already installed on the walkway of the gatehouse when the Brethren received an unexpected visit from a messenger sent by the Baron de Fontenac. Siorac could hardly believe his eyes, nor Sauveterre his ears, when Siorac read the message out loud: the only daughter of the Baron de Fontenac, Diane, was suffering from a grave illness, which they feared to be life-threatening. Unfortunately, none of the doctors of Sarlat, Bergerac or Périgueux would consent to visit Diane at the Château de Fontenac.

  “By my oath, they know the man too well!” observed Sauveterre.

  As a consequence, the Baron de Fontenac beseeched the Baron de Siorac and Monsieur de Sauveterre, as good Christians, to pardon the differences which had arisen between their two families in the past…

  “The ‘differences’!” broke in Sauveterre. “That’s a pretty way of putting it!

  …and he humbly begged the Baron de Mespech to bring his medical knowledge to the aid of his daughter.

  The two brothers stared at each other in disbelief.

  “I am of the opinion we should flatly refuse,” said Sauveterre. “Do we even know what she is suffering from, this Diane? It could be the plague. Some new cases have lately been discovered in the Sarlat region and it would be just like Fontenac to bring us this contagion!”

  “Begging your pardon, but I believe we should accept,” replied Siorac. “It seems to me the Christian and clever thing to do.” He smiled and continued, “But of course only under certain conditions.”

  After a lengthy discussion, my father’s opinion carried the day, and, within the hour, Siorac had composed a letter to the Baron de Fontenac. He noted that, although a graduate of the faculty of medicine of Montpellier, he was not a licensed physician and that there must undoubtedly be, in Sarlat, Bergerac and Périgueux, doctors more knowledgeable than he; that as yet he had only healed persons too sick to afford the care of these doctors; that he could not leave Mespech in such troubled times as these, much less visit his neighbour; but that if Fontenac wished to entrust Diane to his care, along with a chambermaid, he would attend her and lodge her on the first floor of the gatehouse of Mespech, whose south window looked towards the fortress of Fontenac; that he wanted it understood that he alone would decide on the care given to Diane for the entire length of her convalescence; and that during that time, neither Diane nor her chambermaid should receive visitors, either from Fontenac or any other party; that in the event of a tragic outcome of this illness, the Baron de Fontenac relieved
the Baron de Mespech of any responsibility, and renounced in advance any recourse or legal proceedings against him; and that, finally, Diane and her chambermaid should be washed in hot water and deloused with the greatest care before leaving Fontenac.

  I cannot explain this last, assuredly most bizarre, prescription except by reference to my father’s maniacal horror of filth and certain pestiferous insects against which we waged a daily campaign at Mespech. Later, when I myself was staying at the court of Charles IX, I was often amused at the thought of how horrified my father would be to see one of the elegant and superbly dressed ladies in the king’s entourage seize a louse from her hair and crush it between her delicate fingers without anyone around her seeming the least bit astonished.

  In any case, Fontenac consented to everything, including the stipulation that a copy of the correspondence exchanged with my father on this occasion be copied by a court scribe and entrusted to the archives of the magistrate in Sarlat.

  No one at Mespech, not even Escorgol, who lived downstairs from her in the gatehouse, was allowed to see Diane, who was described by my father as being fourteen years old and quite beautiful, with long black hair, large green eyes and very sweet and well behaved in the bargain, resembling in everything her mother and not at all the tiger she had for a father, a description which inflamed the imaginations of the three of us rascals of Mespech.

  On the other hand, what Jean de Siorac kept from us was that he had recognized on Diane the marks of bubonic plague. Although the month of September was very mild that year, he ordered a great fire to be kept going night and day in the sickroom: he thought that the contagion of the plague could be spread by air and he wanted the air in the room purified by fire. For the same reason, he wore a mask over his mouth and nose when he approached Diane and, before leaving, he threw it in the flames of the hearth. Going directly to his library and avoiding all contact en route, he had two huge basins of hot water brought in, in which he bathed his entire body, believing in the virtue of heat against the contagion. He prescribed the same precautions for Toinette, Diane’s chambermaid, and even for Escorgol, since he approached Toinette to bring her firewood and victuals. Never did poor Escorgol bathe so much in his entire life, and he complained bitterly about it, fearing that his skin would be worn out by it, or go soft on contact with the water.