The Angel Asrael

by S. Henry Berthoud

  “Hubert,” said the old man-at-arms to his comrade, who was warming himself by a large fire nearby, half-asleep, “it’s necessary to agree that the disappearance of the squire Amalric is very strange!”

  “Squire Amalric?” asked the latter, yawning.

  “What! You don’t know that he came back yesterday shortly before the evening prayer, and that no one knows what has become of him since?”

  “Pardieu! I might be able to tell you, for the news you’re giving me explains the strange sound that I heard yesterday, when I was on guard beside the tower, next to the moat. Amalric has drowned.”

  “What are you staying? How do you know?” demanded the old man, drawing nearer to his comrade, curiously.

  “It was diabolically cold, and I was wrapped in my cloak, half asleep...”

  “Damned idler! Going to sleep when one is on sentry duty!” muttered the guardian of the drawbridge.

  “Well, there’s no great fault in drowsing at the foot of a tower defended by thirty feet of water! Suddenly, I heard a cry, and then something like an enormous mass hitting the water. The night was one of the blackest, as you know; I couldn’t distinguish anything. But if the squire has disappeared, there’s scarcely any doubt about it; it was him who precipitated himself from the top of the tower where he resides alone with his wide.”

  “And what could have driven him to such an act of despair?”

  The soldier’s voice then became lower and more mysterious.

  “Monseigneur Gérard loves Dame Gertrude. I saw him yesterday morning embracing her tenderly, and, by the salvation of my soul, she lent herself to it with pleasure. It’s a good means to get rid of a jealous husband...by night...from the top of a tower... Gérard, nicknamed Maufilâtre because some say that he poisoned his father in order to be castellan of Saint-Aubert sooner...”

  “Silence! silence! Such words, Hubert, might be worth the gibbet to you…and yet, alas, I’m only too tempted to believe what you’re saying. Yesterday evening, when Master Delavigne mentioned his brother, Monseigneur started. Gertrude went pale. May God have pity on us! If it’s thus, woe to our master! Yesterday was All Saints’ Day; whoever is slain on that day only rests in peace in the tomb after having punished his murderer.”

  The two soldiers shuddered suddenly. A shrill cry was heard at the drawbridge.

  “That’s Amalric’s voice!”

  “So, imbecile, he was drowned in the moat of the high tower? You’ve had a bad dream. That’s what a sentinel gets for going to sleep at his post. Come and help me lower the bridge.”

  Both of them laughing at their somber conjectures, went to introduce the squire. At the sight of Amalric, they exchanged a glance of terror and signed themselves. Mercy! He resembled a cadaver more than a living man. His cheeks were pale and hollow, his gaze dull and fixed. When he spoke, his white lips could hardly be seen to move, and when his hand gripped the hands of the men-at-arms, it appeared to them to be as cold and stiff as that of a dead man.

  “My brother! My brother!”

  It was Delavigne who was running, full of joy. At the sight of the strange change that had taken place in Amalric’s features, he stopped suddenly, and let the arms that he was holding out in order to embrace his brother fall back.

  Amalric, seemingly unsurprised by the terror produced by his appearance, marched in silence. He finally showed a sign of emotion; that was when he suddenly encountered Sire Gérard.

  His pale face became paler still; no disinterred cadaver ever appeared so livid.

  Gérard seemed no less stupefied than all the others, but he disguised his disturbance beneath an expression of severity and discontentment.

  “Where are you coming from at such an hour, Amalric, without arms and dripping wet, as if you’d swum across the château’s moat? You arrived yesterday; Delavigne told me so; why didn’t you come immediately to tell me how you had carried out my orders with regard to the Bishop of Cambrai? Why have you left the château?”

  Amalric replied in a hoarse and slow voice that bore no resemblance to his habitual manner of speaking: “I perceived that I had lost something precious…the parchment remitted for you by the bishop, the receipt for the ransom that you owed him. I scaled the postern in order to go in search of the document: here it is.”

  “And in what disposition did you find that old drunkard the bishop?”

  “He does not want for anything in the world to lift the excommunication launched against Your Lordship. If I were you, I would take no account of his excommunications; I would take my revenge on him; I would recuperate my ten thousand silver marks. The manor is poorly guarded; the repair work that is being carried out there renders its defense impossible. In addition, the Bishop is leaving tomorrow to go and see the Emperor; the canons have served him well with regard that Prince. He is taking half the garrison as an escort: two hundred men-at-arms could easily take possession of that rich fortress without encountering any resistance.”

  “What are you saying, Gilles?”

  “Yes, their sense of security will cost them dear if you are able to take advantage of it.”

  Then the seigneur and the squire became to talk in even lower voices, and headed for the castellan’s apartment together.

  Half an hour later, the greatest agitation reigned in the courtyard of the Château de Saint-Aubert; four hundred men-at-arms were equipping their horses and donning their battle-dress; Gérard was going from one to the next in order to hurry them up.

  Standing on the perron, the pale Amalric contemplated the scene with a gaze the sight of which made one feel ill.

  While the animated tableau that he had before him seemed to absorb him entirely, a small white hand came to pose gently on his shoulder.

  “Amalric! Amalric! After the sad anguish you caused me last night, you’re going to depart without having said a word to me, without having seen me! Amalric, you no longer love me; I can see that clearly!”

  He turned his livid face slowly toward her, and began to smile horribly. Poor Gertrude shivered in all her limbs.

  “I appreciate your tenderness for what it is worth; I’ll prove it to you, Gertrude.” And, seizing her hand, he dragged her toward the tower where they lived.

  “Amalric! Everyone is on horseback; you alone are unarmed! Cursed be the newly married! They think more about wiping away women’s tears than putting on a coat of mail.”

  “A few moments’ respite will suffice, Monseigneur. Grant them to me; I’ll catch up with you before you’ve reached the end of the avenue.”

  The men-at-arms immediately set forth on the march. Amalric remained alone with Gertrude.

  He attached a gaze to her that she could not support; but, forcefully shaking the arm that he gripped in his gauntlet, he obliged Gertrude to raise her head.

  “You are a faithful spouse,” he said, finally, with an indescribable smile.

  Gertrude fell in a faint.

  Amalric, standing without making a movement, waited until she came round.

  When she opened her eyes again, the inexorable Amalric was still there; the infernal smile on his lips had not been effaced.

  “Mercy! Mercy!”

  Without proffering a word, he lifted her up with a wiry and icy arm, went up rapidly to the platform of the tower, and showed her with his finger the abyss open beneath her feet.

  “At least have pity on the salvation of my soul!” she cried, in despair.

  “Be saved then, you…but your seducer will be damned.”

  She started to beg: “Amalric! Amalric! Mercy! Mercy!”

  He did not reply, seized Gertrude by the hair, held her for a few moments suspended above the abyss as if to prolong her execrable agony…and then it was done.

  The aspect of Cambrai in 1136 was very different from the one it presents today; the town extended, narrow and compact, from the Château de Selles to the foot of the Mont-du-Boeufs; there, it suddenly extended two immense wings, which covered the hill; a church under the invoca
tion of Saint Médard and Saint Cloud dominated that vast amphitheater.

  The town was therefore formed of two quite distinct parts, one black and inhabited by poor people, the other the more becoming abode of the nobility and the well-to-do townspeople. Those two parts were only held together by a sort of isthmus that formed a square surrounded by palisades. That was the warren of prostitutes, the Ruelle des Bellottes, and the dwelling of the executioner. One could not be mistaken about that, on seeing wretched women, half-dressed and wearing faded cheap jewelry, wandering in that muddy enclosure. As for the executioner’s house, it was even less unmistakable; in front of the threshold a gibbet rose up between two enormous stakes; the stake to the right was covered with the ears of thieves; from the one to the right hung, at the end of a long iron chain, the narrow pointed dagger that was made red hot in order to pierce the tongue of blasphemers. The place was named then, as it still is today, Coupe-Oreille.

  At the other extremity of the town, not far from the Porte de Selles, or Saint-Jean, in the middle of angular fortifications, the bell-tower of the Episcopal palace, the Abbaye de Saint-Aubert, surged forth, and the semi-ruined towers of the cathedral.

  The numerous workmen who were laboring to repair that immense edifice, to which Gérard Maufilâtre had set fire a year before, were mostly vassals of the Seigneurs du Cambrésis, sent by their suzerains to undertake that pious chore.

  Dusk was beginning to fall; the workmen emerged in order to return in troops to their villages, for the roads were not safe then. If some imprudent individual had dared the leave the town alone and unarmed, he would infallibly have been robbed by the brigands that infested the region. Besides which, by gathering thus, they were dispensed of the toll levied by each seigneur on the travelers who traversed his domain. Relief from that toll was accorded to the workmen in favor of the Christian motives that had sent them to Cambrai.

  Each of the workmen doffed his cap respectfully before Messire Nicolas de Chiêvre, the provost of the church, standing on the drawbridge of Bon-Secours. He counted them as they passed before him; that was to make sure that none of them had remained in the château. In doing that he was fulfilling the duties of his charge, duties prescribed by the suspicious prudence of those times of war and strife.

  Messire de Chiêvre’s garments were those of the laymen of the twelfth century: a long robe, brown in color, descended all the way to his feet, the soft gray leather shoes of which were cropped above the ankle. Above that robe he wore a narrow mantle that allowed the sight of a large chaplet placed around his shoulders, and which fell back over to his breast; that; that mantle, lined with miniver, partly covered the satchel attached to the left-hand side of his belt, the usage of which was the same as out present-day pockets. But the most singular object of his costume was incontrovertibly the headgear, a bonnet of brown cloth terminated by a long point; that point wound twice around the head and came to fall as a narrow cord above the forehead.

  Messire Nicolas might have been thirty years old; his pale and regular physiognomy offered a mixture of firmness and melancholy that was not devoid of grace; his distracted gaze and vague smile gave rise to the thought that he had suffered the long chagrins that time softens but does not efface, the chagrins that are the deadly privilege of an ardent and sensitive soul.

  While the individual whose portrait we have just traced was occupied in counting the workmen, he saw a man-at-arms approaching at the gallop. Such as the manner in which he was pressing his horse that the bridge resounded under him before anyone had had time o think about stopping him. The unknown man threw a scroll of parchment at Messire Nicolas’ feet, and, making his charger execute an abrupt about-turn, he vanished like an apparition, without anyone being able to ascertain where he had come from, or where he had gone.

  This is the tenor of the said parchment:

  Inform Monseigneur Liétard that Gérard, known as Maufilâtre, suzerain of Saint-Aubert, has left his domain with four hundred men-at-arms in order to surprise, set ablaze and pillage the episcopal manor at nightfall.

  “Raise the drawbridge of Bon-Secours and let down the portcullises!

  “Workmen, let none of you leave. Go up on to the rampart; load the ballistas with stones; assemble your companies; let every archer have a good sack full of arrows with him.

  “As for the men-at-arms, seneschal, let them don their coats of mail, and let the horses, fully barded, be maintained ready to be mounted.

  “As for you, Messires the canons, while we fight for the Lord’s house, go pray in the church with the intention of those who will receive martyrdom today, and implore for our holy cause the protection of Jesus Christ and the immaculate virgin.”

  The crowd that the strange apparition of the man-at-arms, the news of which had immediately spread through the manor, had caused to assemble around Messire de Chiêvre was suddenly seen to disperse. A few moments sufficed to carry out the prudent measures ordered by the provost. All the more urgency was put into it because several people had already recounted that they had seen the mysterious messenger evaporate into the air. Others went even further; they had been dazzled by the luminous aureole that scintillated around his head; they had seen him deploy his two great white wings. The most credulous had no doubt that it was the blessed archangel Saint Michael, send by the intercession of Our Lady in order to preserve the cathedral church of Cambrai from ruination.

  A year had gone by.

  Night was beginning to fall. Messire Nicolas de Chiêvre was standing on the drawbridge of Bon-Secours; as usual, he was counting the workmen who were coming out when Master Delavigne, clad in black, approached the provost, who extended his hand to him affectionately.

  “May Our Lady aid you, Master Wirembault Delavigne. Be welcome! A few more moments and I’m all yours. Raise the drawbridge, men-at-arms; the workmen have gone. Let no one enter or leave unless they say the password.

  “Now,” he added, turning to Delavigne, “tell me, Master, what earns me the honor of your visit at such a late hour.”

  Delavigne, leaning on one of the pillars of the drawbridge, had plunged into a profound reverie. In order to extract him from it, it was necessary to address him for a second time.

  “I desire to speak to Monseigneur Liétard immediately,” he replied, finally, “and I have come to implore you to introduce me to his presence right away.”5

  That request evidently embarrassed the man to whom it was addressed. Liétard was at supper at that moment, and, as he scarcely had the custom of drinking soberly and was almost always tottering when he got up from the table, the provost of the church was reluctant to let him be seen in such a state. Offering, in consequence, a few excuses, he engaged Delavigne to defer his interview with the prelate until the following day.

  “Oh, no, it’s necessary that I see him immediately. The salvation of my soul depends on it; the slightest delay might damn me for eternity.”

  The warmth with which the old man expressed himself caused Nicolas de Chiêvre to yield, although regretfully; he took Delavigne to the vast hall where Liétard was. At the sight of the provost the coarse merriment painted on the trivial and pedantic face of the prelate gave way to the serious constraint of a schoolboy caught at fault by his regent.

  Liétard readjusted his soutane precipitately, which was undone over his breast, and sat up straight in the large armchair in which he was sprawled. “Oh! Here’s our worthy provost! Benedicto tibi! In the ear of a stout canon sitting to his right he added: “Vade retro, Satanas! He could surely have left us to sup in peace.” He went on: “By my miter, here’s the rich treasurer Master Wirembault Delavigne! Oh, I understand—you’ve come to reclaim the four hundred silver marks you had so much trouble lending us, in spite of the guarantees we gave you. You’ve picked a bad time, Master, we’ve been chastised by iron and fire. The servants of Notre-Dame-de-Grace are very poor, for the accursed Maufilâtre has destroyed the Lord’s house from top to bottom, and if the Archangel Michael hadn’t struck him down a
year ago...”

  “That’s not the reason...”

  “Then speak freely…but, one moment… Hola! Cup-bearer, two goblets and another bottrine6 of wine.”

  “Monseigneur,” de Chiêvre, interrupted, in a tone that was simultaneously respectful and severe, “Master Delavigne wants to speak to you privately.”

  “Privately? Doubtless you have some advantageous loan to propose to me? Messire de Chiêvre, always vigilant for the interests of the church, and who knows its needs, has been able to arrange its affairs; we’re grateful to him for that, the worthy provost. Let’s see, don’t be too demanding, Master Delavigne, and we’ll arrange that inter pocula.”

  “In the name of the salvation of your soul,” cried the old man, putting his hands together, “deign to listen to me with no other witness than Messire de Chiêvre!”

  “Go away, then, Messires the canons, and please excuse our incivility. You can see that the crosier of a bishop is heavier than people think; the duties of our ministry overwhelm us even after supper, while it one remain for you to digest peacefully and lie down in a good bed...

  “Now we’re alone, Master Delavigne…but, one more moment…two clean goblets. Pour, and fill mine... Now speak, Master; we’re listening to you.”

  A silence of a few minutes went by before Delavigne, collecting his ideas, began to explain the motives that had brought him. Perhaps he was also waiting until Liétard had finished filing his goblet and arranging himself comfortably in his armchair.

  “I have come,” he finally said, in a slow voice, “to beg you to permit me, Wirembault Delavigne, and Marie Dauvilliers, my legitimate wife, to make a vow of continence between your hands, my will being to consecrate to pious foundations all that I possess and to retire to the Hôpital Saint-Julien, to spent the rest of my days in the service of the sick; to beg you humbly to receive in the Abbaye de Saint-Aubert my two sons, Luc and Guillaume; and finally, to employ you to request the Archbishop of Rheims to admit my daughter Berthe to a religious community; all in the hope of obtaining from the Divine Redeemer the forgiveness of our family’s sins, and particularly those of my late brother Gilles-Amalric Delavigne.”