City of Wisdom and Blood

by Robert Merle

  O Lord, how naked I felt at that moment without them—alone and dispossessed—yet still in command of our young troop on this perilous journey.

  I was rescued from the depths of this melancholy—which, strange to say, had come over me as a result of La Patota’s gift of pastries—by the little page, Rouen, who galloped up alongside me, hatless, his red hair sticking straight up into the rays of the midday June sun. With his green eyes—normally so merry, what with all of the tricks he played on people—gravely fixed on me, he asked me in a low voice if he could have a word with me. I nodded in acknowledgement, and slowed Accla to a walk so that we could let the rest of the party get some distance ahead of us.

  “My master,” whispered Rouen, “a dastardly plot is being hatched against you. Brother Antoine is trying to undermine you in the baron’s eyes.”

  “What is he saying?”

  “That he doesn’t believe your story about your brother’s slow fever, since Samson can clearly ride and looks the peak of health. And that he doesn’t believe that you’re of the true religion since you haven’t been to confession since Toulouse, despite your conquests in the inns we’ve stayed in.”

  “And what does the baron say to all this?”

  “He swears that he likes you well enough, but that if it’s proved you’re a heretic, he’ll thrust his sword through your liver and thereby gain an indulgence from Our Lord Jesus Christ after his death.”

  “He hopes to reach salvation after his death through my liver!” I exclaimed. “Gentle Rouen, is that all?”

  “Hardly! Brother Antoine believes that instead of killing you—which might have its risks—he’d rather have you remanded to the judges in Carcassonne to be examined as to your beliefs.”

  “Ah, what a good apostle he is!” I joked, feigning lightheartedness. “Rouen,” I continued, smiling, “here is a delicious cake and two sols as my thanks for your fidelity. But I am no heretic, as I shall soon show you.”

  “Even if your were,” replied Rouen, “I’d still like you better than Brother Antoine, who is always denouncing my foibles to the baron so that a day doesn’t pass without my feeling the whip. The nine-tailed cat has so scratched and bloodied my buttocks that I can hardly sit in my saddle. Bloody hell, I say, death to this pig in skirts, and believe me, I’d happily set my dog on him to bite him where I’m in such pain.”

  “By the belly of St Anthony! I’ll help you if I can,” I promised, laughing.

  And, offering him another of La Patota’s cakes, I sent him back to the head of the cavalcade, happy and sworn to my service. As for me, I dawdled for a while at the back of the troop, musing as I watched Accla’s ears. “Ah, Accla!” I thought. “You would never kick another pony in the stomach over a question of dogma! But, as I think about it, this is very unhappy news. What a terrible image I now have of my fellow men! This very unbrotherly brother whom I’ve never knowingly offended! This baron, whom I’ve faithfully served as interpreter! Did I pull a fish bone from his throat so that he could vomit blood and death on me? O Lord! I’ve hardly left my happy nest at Mespech and now must confront the awful truth about my fellow men, that they treat the least of the innocents as if he were the worst of the damned!”

  For a while I was petrified and overwhelmed by the imminent danger that threatened me. And what course of action could the three of us take to avoid our impending fate? To remain with the pilgrims would be sure peril, but to leave them was equally perilous since the road beyond Carcassonne led right into the mountains of Corbières, where the brigands had their lairs. Words from the Old Testament came back to me and I recited a verse: “O Lord, I am counted with them that go down into the pit! O Lord, the wicked are as numerous as the blades of grass! Lord, how long will they triumph over your people and crush them?”

  To this I added a short prayer and suddenly felt entirely relieved yet still uncertain as to the course of action we should take, since I was moving in a world of bodies and not souls. My first thought was to hide my worries from Samson, since I well knew that this beautiful angel would be of no help in this world. On the other hand, Miroul had his head securely fixed on his shoulders and his feet planted firmly on the ground. My father had urged that I take care to consult him in such danger and so, pulling him out of Samson’s and the pilgrims’ earshot I shared with him our situation.

  He listened without batting an eyelash. “My master,” he observed when I’d finished, “I’ve heard tell by your good nurse Barberine that your noble father and Monsieur de Sauveterre—at the time that they converted to the new religion but before they were ready to announce their faith, so great was the danger of being burnt—used a clever trick to appear to hear Mass at Mespech without really participating in it. They had a window pierced high up in the wall of the chapel that connected this sanctuary with their quarters on the upper floor. Thus could they hear the voice of the curate Pincers while sitting in Sauveterre’s study. Without listening to it, of course. Their excuse for not attending Mass was the old injury to Monsieur de Sauveterre that made it painful for him to descend to the chapel. In reality, they were chanting the Psalms of David while the priest was intoning his paternosters and Ave Marias.”

  “Yes, I know all about their cleverness,” I smiled. “My father showed me the breach in the wall of their study and told me all about it.”

  “So, my master,” Miroul advised, “do as your father did. Use a ruse. Go to confession.”

  “To this diabolical priest? He’ll see at my first words that I’m not a papist.”

  “So don’t make your confession to him. Make it to Father Hyacinth, who’s a bit hard of hearing and, to boot, a bit senile and forgetful. Plus he’s no friend of Brother Antoine’s, who used to lord it over him for not belonging to the same order.”

  “What a perfect idea! But how do you know all this, Miroul?”

  “Oh, I talk to the valets. The servants always know more than the masters. Sometimes more about them than they know themselves.” As he said this, his brown eye twinkled while the blue one remained impassive, a sure sign that he knew all about the use to which I’d put my nights in the arms of the Two Angels and between the paws of the Golden Lion.

  Brother Hyacinth, whom Miroul had just named, always trotted along at the rear of the cavalcade, not because his horse was old and weak, but because he didn’t trouble to spur it on, preferring to leave the reins limp on the steed’s neck and, scarcely holding on to them, make signs of the cross over his vast midsection, on which he seemed forever to focus his meditations—or at least so it seemed, since one could barely perceive his face hidden beneath his monk’s cowl, which kept the midday sun off a bald, greasy head that shone like marble. Somnolent and dreamy, his fat loins leaning on the saddleback, he plodded along the day through, as if in deep meditation. His nag imitated him in every way and would only speed up to a trot if he lost sight of the other members of his herd—without Brother Hyacinth ever having to take up the reins or use his spurs. Never did he seem to have a word to say to his fellow travellers or offer a response to any who hailed him, but, feigning deafness, would always respond to every question with “Eh? Eh? Eh?” muttering a paternoster so that no one would dare bother him further. And so, since he always seemed to be in deep spiritual prayer and meditation, he had acquired a saintly reputation among the pilgrims, and even Caudebec held him in high esteem.

  Once we reached an inn, however, as long as the food was good, our hermit awoke and lowered his cowl, revealing his polished dome, bloated face and crimson nose. He suddenly regained his hearing well enough to hear the hostess announce the various dishes and seemed to find his voice sufficiently to call the serving maids to pour him more wine, all of which he ate and drank quietly, his visage steeped in piety, like certain religious people who offer themselves fully the pleasures of the belly, having renounced those of the lower organs. But, to tell the truth, I know some monks, including some among our Norman pilgrims, who cared as little for vows and rules as for an onion skin
, and drank as deeply from the cup of lechery as they did from the cup of good cheer. And though these are, among the papists, terrible abuses that should be righted, they are far, in my opinion, from the worst of the true faith’s shortcomings. What example should a shepherd give his flock, especially when among those lodging in the same inn with him are to be found chaste and virtuous women as were some of our Norman ladies? Is it not a shame, as Geoffrey Chaucer said, if the shepherd is dirty and the sheep are clean?

  But to continue… I reined in Accla, which was not an easy task, since my little black mare, always so proud and spirited, wanted to break ahead of the heavy Norman workhorses, and was too highly bred to be content to hang back behind them. She had to obey, however, and follow my lead when I sidled up alongside the monk’s mount.

  “Brother Hyacinth,” I greeted him loudly, leaning towards his cowled head. “May I ask you to confess me?”

  “Eh? Eh? Eh?” he quavered without turning his head one notch in my direction, before beginning to mumble a paternoster. I waited until he had finished his prayer, but no sooner had he finished the pater than he was off on an Ave, so I had no recourse but to reach into my saddlebags and, pulling out one of La Patota’s cakes, wave it in front of his nose.

  “God bless you, my son,” gurgled Brother Hyacinth as he stuffed the pastry into his vast maw. Finally, after having tasted it, chewed it, turned it over on his tongue, pressed it against his palate and swallowed it, he announced with a sigh, “I assuredly can. In 1256, our Holy Father the Pope granted my order the power to hear confession within the limits of our diocese.”

  “Do you mean, Brother Hyacinth,” I asked with alarm, “that you cannot hear confession outside your diocese?”

  “Assuredly I can. I received permission to hear the confession of these pilgrims wherever their calling may take them.”

  “Alas, I’m no pilgrim.”

  “No matter. You’re one of our group, serving as the baron’s interpreter.”

  This said, he fell silent for so long that I thought he must have fallen asleep, his cowl hiding his face. However, eventually he continued: “My son, I belong to the poorest of the mendicant orders and have in my purse not one single sol. I need not tell you that I am not one of those who goes about in leather boots or with golden clasps on my poor cowl like some Benedictines I could mention.”

  “Indeed,” I concurred. “Brother Antoine looks very well appointed.”

  “Well appointed!” scoffed Brother Hyacinth with a bitterness whose intensity surprised me. “His abbey has locked away in its vaults behind huge iron doors a prodigious treasure: 17,443 relics, including several pieces of the true cross.”

  I confess that I did not immediately grasp, in my naivety, just how such relics “enriched” the abbey of Brother Antoine, but all I had to do was listen further.

  “These relics,” Brother Hyacinth continued, “are put on display once a year on All Saints’ Day, and the faithful come out like flocks of sheep from all corners of the diocese to venerate them, for their eternal profit. You see, this veneration is worth, year in, year out, 130,000 days of indulgence! With such a great sum of days, my son, you can imagine the size of the offerings!”

  I breathed not a word, so outraged was I by this shameful traffic.

  “For my part,” continued Brother Hyacinth, “I belong, as I believe I mentioned, to a mendicant order. Poverty is my lot. If you would like me to hear your sins, my son, you must make a donation to my order.”

  “Here is my donation,” I replied, after digging around in my purse, not without some repugnance.

  “Three sols!” growled Brother Hyacinth, holding them disdainfully in the palm of his large hand. “That’s a very small sum for the son of a baron. Let’s not haggle. To give freely and gladly to one’s confessor is a sure sign that one is already repentant. Are you suggesting that your contrition is half-hearted?”

  “Here! Two more sols,” I conceded, furious that I’d let myself be fleeced.

  “That should do it, I think,” said Brother Hyacinth. “I’m listening.”

  Isn’t it a marvellous thing, however, that, Huguenot though I am, rejecting the very idea of heard confession, and despising as I did the repugnant avarice of this particular priest—who barely listened to me—I nevertheless made a full confession of all of my sins from the most venial to the deadliest without mitigating any of them, but with heartfelt sincerity and in fear of having angered God, as though I had completely forgotten the secular design and useful ruse that had inspired my recitation? “Well,” I thought, “maybe the papists are right about this, at least: that the confessor counts for a lot less than the confession.”

  “My son,” said Brother Hyacinth when I’d done, “before I can absolve you, I must give you penitence, for you have committed sins of the flesh in the inn at Castelnau, and sins of irreverence and gluttony. For your sins of lust, you must recite ten paternosters and ten Ave Marias. And for your sins of gluttony, which is a cardinal sin as you know, you must remand into my care the pastries that remain hidden in your saddlebags—all of them!”

  Alas, I doled out my delicious treasures one by one, but I cannot claim that I accomplished this penance in complete humility as I did so with feelings of bilious rage. Thereupon, Brother Hyacinth pronounced seriously and suavely my absolution—a shield I hoped would serve to parry the blows that Brother Antoine hoped to land on us.

  Of course, the habit doesn’t make the monk and, truth to tell, doesn’t unmake him either. At the time the plague was so ravaging the townspeople of Sarlat I knew some Franciscans, so often decried by the Protestants, whose robes hid truly evangelical hearts. The bishop, priests, seneschal, judges, noblemen and rich bourgeois had all fled the town at the first signs of the outbreak. But these Franciscans remained and unstintingly brought aid and solace to the plague-ridden people in the poorer areas. All but two of them perished, the two my father liberated from the band of thugs in la Lendrevie in the battle in which Marsal was fatally wounded. One of the two, whom my father had praised for his marvellous devotion during the contagion, replied with a remark that is certainly the sweetest, most beautiful and most charitable statement spoken by the lips of a papist to a Huguenot: he thanked my father, saying that far from considering him a heretic he preferred to think of him as a Christian who had lost his way on the road to salvation, but whom he hoped to find waiting for him at the end of that road.

  I caught up with my gentle brother, Samson, who was quite concerned by my extended absence and whispered (though I need not have taken this precaution, since none of the pilgrims spoke our dialect) that there were doubts about his “slow fever” and asked whether, to lend credence to my story, he couldn’t suddenly pretend to be overcome by dizziness and fall from his horse, Albière, in the midst of the Normans. It took a great deal of work to convince him, since he so hated lies and pretence, but finally he gave in and, spurring his mare onto the grassy edge of the road, took a dramatic fall—so artfully that his breastplate was not dented but his helmet flew off and rolled noisily into the midst of the troop of horses. This produced a great stir, first much laughter, then jokes at his expense, but finally real commiseration, especially among the Norman ladies who, however prudish they might appear, had not failed to be struck by my brother’s good looks.

  “Good people,” I shouted, dismounting and throwing my reins to Miroul, “please continue on your way. It’s nothing. My brother has fainted—the effects of his slow fever.”

  However, a tall, beautiful blonde Norman woman, truly Christian and full of charitable sentiments, named, as I afterwards learnt, Dame Gertrude du Luc, insisted on dismounting as well, and knelt in the grass, with audible sighs of pity, seized Samson with all her strength and pulled him onto her lap, where my poor victim suddenly found himself nested in the protection of her very opulent bosom. Samson, eyes squeezed tight, turned bright red and I turned respectfully away, glancing at Miroul, whose brown eye was twinkling brightly, the blue one stone c
old.

  “Good lady,” I said, “see how my poor brother is weakened by his fever. Might I ask you to let him drink from your gourd?”

  “Assuredly!” answered Dame Gertrude du Luc, with great enthusiasm. And, holding his head tightly between her arm and her bosom, she gave him to drink as she would a baby, Samson daring neither to move a muscle nor to open his eyes.

  “He’s drinking, but I think he’s still fainted away,” Gertrude announced. “What a pity that such a handsome and well-built gentleman should be so feeble as to fall from his horse. By my Christian faith, he looks just like the beautiful Archangel Michael who’s pictured in the stained-glass windows in our church. He has the same milky complexion, the same copper-coloured hair, the same strong shoulders, not to mention those beautiful blue eyes—when he opens them! I would be ashamed to speak thus of him if I thought he were not fainted away,” she blushed, “but I don’t believe he can hear me in his condition. Is he not unconscious?”

  “Oh, there can be no doubt of that, Madame,” I agreed, wrinkling my nose to keep from laughing, so thoroughly did the scene amuse me. “But with a couple of sharp slaps, he will wake up, and not remember a word that has passed between us.”

  “In any case, I mean no disrespect,” said Gertrude with a sigh. “Certainly I’m not yet old enough to be his mother, but I love him as if he were my child. Monsieur de Siorac, before you awaken him, might I kiss his cheeks?”

  “On the lips, Madame, on the lips! Such is our Périgord custom!”

  Miroul’s brown eye twinkled even more at this happy lie and the lady, leaning over him, gave Samson a devout kiss, just as I had bidden. To which, to my great surprise, Samson displayed neither resistance nor repugnance, no doubt seeing nothing blameworthy in this caress, which must have seemed purely maternal and which he received for the first time in his life.