City of Wisdom and Blood

by Robert Merle

  “’Sblood!” I said, amazed to be confronted by such a polite assassin. “And with what?”

  “With this, Monsieur,” said the beggar, taking from beneath his rags a heavy cutlass.

  “And what do you think of this?” I countered, pulling my sword from its sheath. “I think I’ve got more reach than you.”

  “Sorry! But no,” said the man, “again begging your pardon, but your sword will be no use. I don’t use my knife in a mano-a-mano. I throw it. Before you can take a step, you’ll have it sticking from your gut.”

  This said, he took his knife by the point, as if to throw it. I won’t deny that I was now sweating from head to foot, but my distress didn’t paralyse my tongue.

  “You knave,” I said, “if you throw your knife, you won’t have it to defend you, and my valet, Miroul, who’s right behind you, will plant his dagger in your back.”

  Unfortunately, I was lying, for as desperately as I sought to catch sight of him, I couldn’t see a trace of the rascal. However, at the name of my valet, my assassin pricked up his ears, raised an eyebrow and without even turning round to check whether I was telling the truth, said, “Miroul, isn’t he the rogue with one blue eye and one brown eye?”

  “That’s the one!”

  “Aha, Monsieur! I thought so! I know him! And you too! You’re the gentleman who wounded me in the Corbières, captured me, and then saved me from the rope.”

  “Espoumel!” I cried, infinitely relieved. “It’s really you? What are you doing here?”

  “Monsieur,” explained Espoumel, resheathing his knife under his rags and speaking with a certain swagger, “I’m not going to kill you: my honour forbids it.”

  Just at that moment, running up behind him, Miroul arrived, dagger in hand, sweaty and out of breath. “Oh, Monsieur Pierre, thank God you’re all right! I had to put a lackey in his place back there, who wanted to fight me since I bumped him as I ran by.”

  “Put away your dagger, Miroul,” I laughed, resheathing my own weapon. “This assassin is a friend. He calls himself Espoumel.”

  Miroul opened his unmatched eyes very wide, but I didn’t give him much time to enjoy his surprise, for I took my Corbières bandit by the arm and invited him to take refreshment in the needle shop, where Azaïs served each of us a large goblet of wine, before going to fetch Thomassine, for I wanted her to witness our conversation. And it was lucky I did, for without her, I wouldn’t have been able to clear things up.

  Espoumel, who now sported a thick beard, and was tall and as thin as Good Friday, had eyes and mouth only for his wine, which he drank in little sips, appearing to think it quite normal that his victim should be offering him a drink. As for me, as concerned as I was by the present adventure, I couldn’t help following Azaïs’s every step as she left the kitchen, her body undulating like a snake and displaying her modest but very appetizing charms. But I also remembered my mistakes at the Two Angels inn in Toulouse, when Franchou was very put out by my dalliance with the innkeeper, and I didn’t doubt that the same difficulties would ensue with Thomassine if my hands followed my eyes with her maid. But I suddenly became aware that Miroul’s blue-brown gaze had followed the same path as mine, and that he continued to watch with a mix of pleasure and intensity the door through which Azaïs would re-enter the kitchen. I decided it would not sit well with my valet if I robbed him of his portion, and that today’s chicken was worth much more than tomorrow’s egg, and that wanting both risked losing both.

  Azaïs returned, now eclipsed by her beautiful mistress, her luxuriant hair falling loose on her shoulders, looking all pink and blooming from her siesta. I told her what had happened, a tale that cast a dark shadow over her sunny disposition. Turning to my would-be assassin, I said, “Espoumel, now that you’ve enjoyed your wine, tell me who commanded you to kill me and why.”

  “The why part,” said Espoumel, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, “I couldn’t tell you. But the churl who ordered me to do it I know very well. The day after you captured me, I fled with him from the Corbières hills, fearing the wrath of our captain if he suspected us of having cheated him.”

  “Well now, what a pack of wolves! But what are two good fellows like you doing in Montpellier?”

  “My friend knows some sweetmeat from whom he was going to get a few ‘subsidies’. But she threw him out penniless last Friday, so he went and killed a peddler who was connected to her and took his purse.”

  “Nasty business.”

  “I’ll say! Worse than nasty!” replied Espoumel, shaking his head over his wine. “And all the more so since the take was small and quickly drunk up. ’Tis a pity to kill for so little.”

  “Well, there wasn’t much in my student’s purse either, Espoumel. Why me? Why was I next?”

  “Monsieur, I know not, except that my companion swore that there’d be a huge reward if you disappeared.”

  “How much?”

  “Upon my life, I don’t know,” said Espoumel, putting both hands on the table and looking intently at the bottle of wine.

  I wouldn’t have got anything more out of him if Thomassine hadn’t entered the lists at this point, her helmet lowered and her lance levelled at her opponent. “Espoumel, what’s the name of your partner?”

  “Doña, I dare not tell.”

  “Are you hungry, Espoumel?”

  “Hungry, Doña? You’d better believe it! I could eat this goblet after drinking the wine, if you gave it to me.”

  “I’ll give it to you, believe me, and a capon with it that I roasted yesterday that’s waiting in my larder. Would you like a taste?”

  “Would I like a taste, Doña?” said Espoumel, saliva flowing from his lips, his eyes fastened on the bottle.

  “His name, Espoumel?”

  “Le Dentu.”

  “Aha!” cried Thomassine. “Le Dentu! That’s exactly what I would have thought! Azaïs, go and get that capon and serve it up to our friend here. So, it’s Le Dentu…”

  “Le Dentu,” I said. “Is that his real name?”

  “No one knows his real name, not even he does. But the beggar’s got teeth, and beautiful teeth at that. Teeth that will chew up anything you give him. I know this man, my Pierre. When I arrived here from the Cévennes mountains, almost dying from hunger, as thin as a needle, Le Dentu was my pimp and introduced me to sin. He was with me for two years and certainly I loved him. But he was a drunk and a brutal rowdy and was interested only in my take. So I kicked him out as soon as I met Cossolat, whom he was very afraid of, since he’d robed and killed many people. So Le Dentu headed for the Corbières hills, where he’s spent the last eight years or so, and last Thursday he suddenly reappeared. Espoumel, I’m the ‘sweetmeat’ from whom he was going to get some ‘subsidies’ and who’d kicked him out.”

  “Doña,” corrected Espoumel, his mouth full of capon, “I’m a polite man, I am. Never called you a ‘sweetmeat’—that’s not me!”

  “What do I care?” laughed Thomassine, her shoulders rocking with mirth. “I am what I am and not ashamed of it. What’s more, now that I have enough money, I no longer sell my wares. I offer them to whom I please. And my love along with them,” she said, throwing me a tender glance.

  “Thank you, my good Thomassine,” I said, rising from my stool and giving her a kiss on her crimson lips. “I’m grateful for your love and I return it.”

  “Ah, gentle liar!” she breathed as she returned ten kisses for my one, and ran her plump fingers through my hair. “You’re sweet and courteous, like a good Périgordian lad. But I don’t believe you! At least you’re not like these bastards who piss in the well after drinking from it.”

  At which Miroul’s brown eye twinkled while his blue eye remained cold as ice.

  “But, Madame,” said Azaïs, who enjoyed a degree of familiarity with her mistress I’d never seen before in a chambermaid, “that’s all well and good, but doesn’t explain why Le Dentu wanted to murder our gentleman.”

  “Oh yes it does!” rejoined Thoma
ssine. “I know the cad! He viewed Siorac as a rival and reasoned that once he got rid of him he could get his hands on me and my money.”

  So finally everything was clear, and, as everyone fell silent, Azaïs sat up on the table and dangled her legs invitingly, something that, naturally, caught my eye, but, since I had killed that chick as soon as it had hatched, I kept on the straight and narrow. But Miroul was clearly heading right for the trap and the sight of it made me happy, since it would be convenient if the valet were to find pasturage in the same field where his masters sowed their oats. If, that is, I could refer to Dame Gertrude du Luc as “oats”, since at that very moment she was in a room above offering her ambrosia to my beloved Samson. “Oh, my brother!” I mused. “Give in to your pleasure without a thought or worry in the world! How can you possibly believe that our divine master, who has so prodigally bestowed on us the grains and flowers of the fields, could have been so niggardly as to deprive us of such brief pleasures in our short lives?”

  But a knowing look from Thomassine tore me from my reverie and abruptly brought my attention back to our Corbières bandit. “Espoumel,” I said, as I watched him devour his capon, grease dripping from the corners of his mouth, “you tried to kill me once in the mountains, and again here in town. Twice is too much! What are we going to do with you?”

  “Hang me,” said our brigand, as he lapped up his wine with little pensive sips. “It had to come to that. He who one day mocks the hangman’s noose will wear it the next and it won’t be loose. And may God have pity on him! It’s poverty that led me to robbing and killing in the Corbières hills. If I’d been a girl I would have had to live by my skirt. As a boy I learnt to live by the sword. May the Lord Jesus Christ pardon me and I’ll die happy.”

  “Espoumel, you’d be happier still if you lived. If you tell me how and where to find Le Dentu, I’ll ask the king to pardon you.”

  “You’d do that for me, Monsieur?” he gasped, half rising from his stool, his little black eyes wide with disbelief.

  “Assuredly I would.”

  “I’ll have to think about it,” he said, sitting back down.

  * “In the presence of the people.”

  † “Sephardics are called the new Christians but are, in fact, secretly Jews.”

  ‡ “Either less beautiful or less impure” (Ovid).

  § “I make up for my lack of beauty by the gifts of my mind.”

  ¶ “The very man.”

  || “Guillaume Rondelet, venerable doctor of medicine, chancellor and professor at the Royal College of Medicine of Montpellier.”

  ** The Method for Curing All the Sicknesses of the Human Body.

  †† On Syphillis.

  ‡‡ “Trust him, for he has the requisite experience!”

  §§ “In the city and in the world.”

  ¶¶ “To the greater glory of Monsieur d’Assas and of the venerable chancellor of the Royal College!”

  |||| “From one example we don’t know all of them.”

  *** “He has earned his entry.”

  ††† “Be well, my son!”

  7

  SITTING IN HIS JAIL a week later, Espoumel confessed: “Ah, Monsieur de Siorac, my honour would never have given me a minute’s peace for having told Captain Cossolat where Le Dentu was hiding if the rascal hadn’t tried to kill me three days before.”

  “Kill you? But why?”

  “To steal from me.”

  So Espoumel explained that he’d kept hidden in his belt forty sols that he’d acquired illegally, but not without some difficulty, by stealing and reselling a flassada—the name given in Montpellier to a wool blanket.

  “Le Dentu,” he continued, “doesn’t throw a knife like I do. He just stabs you at arm’s length. So very early one morning, as I was sleeping under one of the flying buttresses of the Saint-Firmin church, I saw him in the shadows, creeping towards me on all fours with his blade in his hand.

  “‘Friend,’ I shouted, ‘where are you going?’

  “‘I just have to piss,’ he said, standing up.

  “‘A man who gets up this early can piss wherever he likes. Go ahead, my friend, go right ahead. There’s lots of room and I want to go back to sleep.’”

  After telling me this story, Espoumel looked at me with his beady black eyes, and said, shaking his head, giving great weight to his words, “My noble Monsieur, listen carefully to what I’m going to tell you. Le Dentu is a man of little conscience.”

  “This I believe!” said I.

  But to continue my own story. Le Dentu was waiting at the Golden Cross tavern for good news from my assassin and smiling into his beer with his big teeth, thinking of the fun he’d promised himself, when, instead of Espoumel, it was Cossolat who appeared.

  The beast, surprised in his lair, tried to defend himself with teeth and claws, but he’d picked the wrong adversary, for Cossolat, angry to be confronted by such a ruffian, drew his sword and split his head right down to his jaw.

  This exploit grew in magnitude as the news of it spread through Montpellier, and some heard that he’d split his man from the guzzle to the zatch. It’s a pretty tale, but I can attest that it’s false. Fogacer collected the body for the anatomical theatre before it could be dismembered by the executioner, so I was able to examine it at my leisure and can affirm that it was only the cranium that was cut in two.

  I was not sorry to hear the news, though, having no desire at all to go to court to testify against this brigand. Cossolat had even stronger reasons for not wanting Espoumel to appear in court, because he had him locked away in secret in the city prisons for as long as it would take to get him to provide information on the secret camps and caches of the Corbières brigands.

  These he obtained, not by torture but by persuasion. Cossolat promised him, in the name of the Vicomte de Joyeuse, that the king would pardon him if he ratted on his former allies. Having myself developed a kind of affection for this honest scoundrel, to whom I owed my life, just as he owed me his, I visited him twice a week in his jail, bringing him provisions of meat and wine, all of which turned out to my advantage, as I shall relate.

  The Vicomte de Joyeuse had every reason to be satisfied with my services, for piecing together what Espoumel had told the captain of the archers with what he had confided in me, he knew enough about the camps and caches of the Corbières brigands to mount an expedition against them that wiped them out, ensuring, at least for a time, the security of the road from Carcassonne to Narbonne, and returning peace and prosperity to his barony of Arques.

  This handsome result hadn’t yet been achieved when Caudebec and his roumieux, well rested and refreshed from six days of orgiastic feasting, had resigned themselves to leaving the Three Kings for the city of the Pope, though not before Cossolat had to intervene in a quarrel between the innkeeper and the “pilgrim”, who, as I’d already had occasion to observe, didn’t willingly open his purse, and was more miserly and cheap than any Norman in Normandy.

  I agreed to serve as interpreter in this ugly dispute, which was long and difficult, the scales of justice having been weighted a bit unfairly, since Cossolat didn’t like the baron, who had dared insult him in his own city, but did like the inn’s hostess, who daily bent so willingly to his authority.

  When at last everything was settled, I went looking for Samson and Dame Gertrude, who, hidden away in their little room at the needle shop, were stricken with grief at the idea of leaving the few square feet that had so happily enclosed them for six days and nights in such incredible happiness.

  I found them beyond tears, pale and dazed, plunged into a deep silence, no longer knowing what else to do but hold hands in desperation and gaze at each other with love and astonishment, waiting for the knife that would soon inflict such wounds on their bodies and souls. Alas, I was to be the one to inflict that wound, since the time of the pilgrims’ departure had come, and had to witness their great pain, their last desperate embrace, and then, after kissing his beloved from head to foot, S
amson’s flight from the shop, during which (according to Miroul) he bumped into Thomassine and Azaïs without even seeing them, and ran straight to Maître Sanche’s house.

  At my request, Miroul followed him, but couldn’t enter his room since Samson locked himself in and threw himself on his bed, overcome with heart-rending sobs. Seeing which, Miroul went into my room, which was separated from Samson’s by wooden planks and, sitting next to this wall, sang one of Barberine’s lullabies to comfort his master.

  For my part, I would love to have been able to flee from poor Gertrude’s despair, but once Samson had left she threw herself into my arms, and cried in such a piteous voice that I could hardly restrain my own tears, “Oh, my brother! Don’t leave me now, for I couldn’t bear losing all of him at once! Let me keep you a minute longer, you who belong to him as I do, since I know with what great love you watch over my beautiful angel to ease his way on this earth! For my Samson tells me everything in his heavenly simplicity, so I know what torments he suffered at the idea of his terrible sin and how you dissipated his suffering. May Heaven—if I dare invoke Heaven!—thank you for your care. If Heaven won’t, I will, poor sinner that I am, but is it a sin when we love another so much and would dedicate our heart, body and everything we have to our love?”

  “Oh, Madame!” I pleaded. “Enough! We don’t need to argue this point! Let’s put ourselves in God’s hands. He is good. And how could his goodness sanction the cruel punishments that threaten us in our brief instants of happiness here on earth?”

  “Pierre,” she said, calming considerably, “how I would love it if you could persuade me, as you’ve persuaded Samson! But, my brother, after my departure from Montpellier, when you’ll have such great influence over your brother, are you not going to convince him in the interests of his health to lay his cares at the feet of some commonplace wench, who, despite being younger than I (though I’m hardly old enough to be his mother) would certainly not bear him the love that I do? Don’t think I haven’t noticed the tender looks that the little viper Azaïs gives him every time she sees him.”