City of Wisdom and Blood

by Robert Merle

  Samson, who’d got up very early, was nodding off in his saddle, and managed to stay on Albière by pure force of habit. But Miroul, having to work hard to manage his two Arabians, the one he rode and the one who bore our packs and arms—including the fateful arquebus that was the direct cause of our exile—was nevertheless humming quietly, happy, no doubt, to see me escaping from the very present dangers I was in, given the role my father had assigned him as my guardian angel—at least as far as security was concerned, for his amorous behaviour with Thomassine’s Azaïs would not have appeared very angelic to Monsieur de Gasc, if he’d known about it. And why should a brother assume the right, in the name of God, to judge his brother? The devil if I knew!

  I was at the head of our little platoon, and focused all my attention on watching the windows under which we passed, ready to fire my two pistols instantly at any gun barrel that a would-be assassin might have the temerity to point at me, but I also had to rein in Accla, whose metal shoes tended to slip on the paving stones, shining with last night’s rain. I filled my lungs with the fresh morning air and breathed in the delicious smells of an unknown future, and abandoned myself to the vehement joy that gripped me at the idea that my present troubles were at an end.

  We reached the city gate without incident, and there, laden as we were with all our baggage and all three masked, we had to show the guard the three safe-conduct papers Cossolat had provided us.

  “My noble gentleman,” said the guard, who was as round as a melon and possessed of a benign face, the eyes of a faithful hound and thin lips, “with such spirited horses as you’ve got, you’ll catch up quickly with Captain Cossolat and his platoon of archers. They’re escorting Vignogoule and his hideous wife, since his own aides are sick with fever, as they deliver a poor wench to the gibbet to be hanged for killing her newborn baby that was born out of wedlock. A prettier lass I never saw, and it seems to me a great pity that they should destroy what God has created in his own image.”

  “Ah, but don’t they usually hang criminals near the la Saulnerie gate in an olive orchard? I remember that when we first arrived in Montpellier in June of last year, coming from Narbonne, which would be fifteen months ago now, I saw the gibbet among those trees and the dismembered parts of the body of a poor wench they’d hanged there for the same crime.”

  “Monsieur, they decided to change the venue since the owner of that orchard no longer wanted to rent out his land, claiming the stench of the rotting bodies spoilt his olives. So the city bought an olive orchard whose trees had all gone sterile, two leagues hence on the Nîmes road. That’s where you’ll see Vignogoule at his dirty work, who’d do better to hang his horrible woman and himself afterwards, so cruel, greedy and odious are they, and so ugly that the mere sight of them makes you want to empty your guts right there. Oh, my young gentleman, how many times have I seen poor girls being brought there because they destroyed the fruit of their wombs? Whereas the fathers of these babies go strolling about town free as the air, and what’s worse, proud of themselves for having enjoyed so many of these poor wenches, laughing at the girl’s naivety for having believed their promises of marriage!”

  “Ah, how right you are, my good man,” I agreed. “Man is a scoundrel and justice limps along as best it can.”

  As for the rest, the guard had been right as well. Our horses were so speedy that we quickly caught up with Cossolat’s heavy mounts. The night’s rain had more quickly evaporated on the highway than on the stone streets in Montpellier, and the archers’ nags raised so much dust that our eyes and throats were blinded and parched by it, so we decided to pass them as quickly as we could. I also wanted to give Cossolat a friendly greeting as we passed, hoping to repair somewhat the feelings he’d expressed at our last meeting at Thomassine’s needle shop. Before we spurred on our Arabians, I removed my mask, since the mid-morning sun was so hot and because I no longer needed it now that we had left our enemies behind in Montpellier, stagnating in their hatred within the city’s walls.

  “Hey, Samson,” I called. “Wake up, my brother! You can’t go on lazing in your saddle as if you were still in bed. Spur Albière on! These louts have left us their dust to eat! It’s our turn to return the favour!”

  So I spurred Accla to a gallop, followed by Samson, and, a few paces behind him, Miroul, who was managing his two Arabians so skilfully. Since the cortège that preceded us was taking up the entire width of the road, I slowed down to a trot and hailed the archers in front of us, asking them to let us pass. But they pretended not to hear me, and without turning their heads or reacting at all, they continued as before, despite my cries, and spread out even more across the road, which wasn’t very wide at that point, having narrowed between two rocky outcrops. Angry at such insolence, I was contemplating drawing my sword and applying the flat of my blade to the croups of their horses, when Cossolat suddenly appeared, having heard the ruckus. I greeted him coolly, to which he responded much more civilly than I would have expected, perhaps regretting his words of the previous day.

  “Monsieur de Siorac,” he said, “what do you want?”

  “To pass, Monsieur,” I replied, “with your permission.”

  “Archers!” called Cossolat. “Make way for Monsieur de Siorac! He’s in a greater hurry than we are!”

  At this his soldiers lined up on the right-hand side of the road, and I spurred Accla to a trot, but seeing before me the back of the poor wench they were leading to the gibbet, I slowed to a walk to get a better view of her as we passed, both out of compassion and also because the guard had been so impressed by her beauty. And yet I hesitated to pass, feeling a bit ashamed of my curiosity. While I was trying to make up my mind, I observed that she was riding a mule and was tightly tied to a Moorish saddle, her arms attached behind her with a rope that passed around the stomach of her mount. A hideous fishwife, monstrously fat with a mean and disgusting face, held her mule by the bridle. This ogress was astride a pitiful hack that looked like it got more blows than oats, to judge from its condition. In front of them, I spied, sitting on a raw-boned nag that was nearly crushed by his enormous weight, rode Vignogoule, clothed in the long purple robe that he wore for executions. There was, however, no judge in evidence, but I was not unduly surprised since the Présidial judges doubtless thought it wasn’t worth bestirring themselves so early in the morning for hangings of this kind, which were so frequent that they considered them of little consequence.

  From the back, the girl looked very comely, though she was clothed in a grey chemise that was torn and dirty and her hair was cut short to allow the noose to choke her neck more easily. Catching up to her, I leant forward to see her better. But the movement I made caught her attention and the poor girl turned her head towards me and let out a terrible cry. Gaping, my blood running cold in my veins, I recognized Fontanette.

  “Fontanette,” I said, almost suffocating from the knot in my throat, “is it really you I see in this predicament? How did you come to be here, a brave girl like you?”

  “Oh, my noble friend,” she said. “How can you say that? You who had me kicked out of the pharmacy after falsely accusing me of stealing from you!”

  “Me?” I cried. “But who told you that?”

  “Dame Rachel.”

  “The viper lied through her teeth, I swear it on my salvation!”

  “Monsieur,” broke in Vignogoule, “the condemned girl is going to be hanged, and no one is allowed to speak to her.”

  I looked at Vignogoule with as much repulsion as if I had seen a hundred toads in a pile. His face was unspeakably vile, as if the venom from his brain had seeped down into his face and corrupted his features: he was cross-eyed; his bent nose was spread wide at its base; his closed lips looked like some awful swollen wound; and his cheeks and chin were greying, hairy and full of pustules—to say nothing of the heap of a body on which this hideous head reposed. I spurred Accla behind the mule that Fontanette was riding and came up on Vignogoule’s woman’s right hand.

 
“Good woman,” I said, “ten sols for you if you close your ears.”

  “Monsieur,” said the ogress, her little weaselly eyes suddenly aglow, “as soon as the condemned woman is remitted into my husband’s hands, she belongs to him: her clothes, her body, her five senses and her breath.”

  “Good woman,” I said, “twenty sols for three minutes.”

  “Monsieur,” croaked la Vignogoule, “even for three minutes I can’t sell anything or loan anything that belongs to her: neither her ear nor her breath.”

  “Good woman, forty sols.”

  “Monsieur,” she replied, “you heard me.”

  “Wench,” I replied, frowning and throwing her a terrible look, “one golden écu in return for what I ask or I’ll pass my sword through your guts.”

  At this threat, which to this day I cannot say whether I would have carried out, so furious was I, la Vignogoule, as tempted though she may have been to raise the bid, didn’t dare to confront me or to dispute any further, and without a word held out her hand. I quickly placed an écu in it, which she immediately brought to her bloated lips and bit. This done, she hid it away in her belt and pulled out a rosary from beneath her purple robe, lowered her nose and began to tell her beads, but whether she was praying or only pretending to, only God knows.

  I turned Accla and came up next to Fontanette again. “Fontanette,” I told her, “I never accused you of having robbed me! Do you believe me now?”

  “Alas! I believe you!”

  “After you were sent away I searched everywhere for you!”

  “Alas! I know! I was in Grabels.”

  “In Grabels! Fontanette! That’s near Montpellier! I went through there ten times, shouting your name!”

  “I know. I had told everyone to say they’d never heard of me.”

  “Oh, Fontanette, you didn’t trust me, but you believed Dame Rachel?”

  She made no response, but gave me a look that broke my heart, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “And what did you do in Grabels?”

  “I found employment as a servant on a farm, but the farmer, after promising to marry me, got me pregnant.”

  “You shouldn’t have given in,” I said, knowing it was the wrong thing for me, of all people, to say, but doubtless jealousy had something to do with my reaction.

  “Oh, Pierre!” she sobbed, and turning her tear-streaked face towards me, she threw me a look of such sad reproach that I was transfixed. “How can you say that? It was you who first mounted me!”

  Wholly ashamed, I lowered my eyes, and was unable to say a word, so pricked was I by my conscience. Finally, I said, “Fontanette, you are so good and merciful, how could you kill your baby?”

  “Oh, Pierre! I was forced to against my will and conscience. The farmer ordered me to, threatened me, said that if I didn’t, he send me away penniless. And how would I have fed my child if I hadn’t a crumb to eat myself? Oh, my friend, what a horrible memory I must bear! The minute I was about to give birth, the farmer’s mother pushed me into the barn and, on the same straw as the sheep, I delivered the baby without a soul to love or help me. And when the sweetling was there, all I could think of was that it would go to die with me on the roads, so I put my hand over its mouth and when I took it away, it didn’t move any more.”

  And tears again brimmed over her eyes and, amidst great sobs, streamed down her face. She said in a broken voice, “Oh, Pierre, I committed a great sin! So it’s truly just that they hang me! And may the Virgin Mary intercede for me with her divine Son! But I’m so afraid of dying by the rope!”

  And seeing her trembling with fear so uncontrollably at this sinister thought, with each step of her mule bringing her closer to her Calvary, I asked her more questions to try to distract her.

  “So what did you do with the little body?”

  “I threw it in the dry well, but la Grenue saw me.”

  “Who’s la Grenue?”

  “A neighbour, who can think only of marrying my farmer. La Grenue denounced me to the priest, who sent for me to come to confession. But when he was alone with me, he promised not to tell if he could have me right there. But I didn’t want to and was horrified by the idea of sinning with a man of God. So the curate wrote to the judges in Montpellier and a month later they came and arrested me in Grabels and locked me in the city jail.”

  “Oh, Fontanette!” I thought. “What a chain of terrible people has been soldered together, link by link, to forge your misfortune! Myself, alas! Dame Rachel, the farmer and the very priest of Grabels. May God forgive us the evil we have wrought on you!”

  “Pierre,” she sobbed, trembling, “I’m terrified. Not of dying, but of being hanged by the neck and suffocating. They told me in the jail that it’s a long and frightful torture.”

  “Monsieur de Siorac,” said Cossolat, who’d come up quietly behind us, “it’s against the law to talk to the prisoner. Woman,” he said to la Vignogoule, “how did it happen that you didn’t forbid this?”

  “Captain!” protested the ogress, with her most hypocritical look. “I was saying my prayers and didn’t hear a thing!”

  “Ah, to be sure! I trust your compassion like I’d trust a viper. I know you, wench. A greased palm turns you deaf as a stone. Monsieur de Siorac, a word with you if I might. Let’s ride on!”

  We galloped ahead, and having put some distance between ourselves and the sinister procession, Cossolat said, “I understand what this wench meant to you. And the Présidial judges better than I. But I want you to know that I did everything I could to put this execution off till tomorrow, to avoid this meeting. But the judges decided otherwise. That’s why I brought so many men. Some of the judges are hoping, knowing how impulsive you are, that you’ll commit some madness.”

  “So it’s a trap?”

  “Assuredly. And I’m the jaws of that trap.”

  “I won’t fall into it. I thank you, Cossolat, for the warning.”

  “So, no shooting?” said the captain, turning in his saddle to look me straight in the eye.

  “No shooting, I promise. But I would like you to grant me the chance to speak privately with the hangman.”

  “It’s not possible,” said Cossolat brusquely. “I’m the only one who may speak to Vignogoule.”

  “Monsieur,” I said, gulping, “you may push me to do something you’d have preferred to avoid.”

  Cossolat fell silent at this prospect and gave me a very severe look, full of resolve. I felt, no doubt, somewhat less resolve than he did, for I couldn’t dream of attacking a platoon of archers without a lot of help from Miroul, who already had his hands full with his Arabians, and also from Samson. How could I ask them to risk their lives simply because I was willing to risk mine for this girl?

  “Siorac,” said Cossolat, “if you promise to forgo any violence whatsoever, I could bring my archers up as a vanguard to do reconnaissance on the road ahead. What you might say to anyone in my absence would assuredly be none of my business.”

  “Captain,” I replied, “I promise.”

  He spurred his horse and was gone, and I went back alone to the procession.

  “Vignogoule,” I said, riding up beside him, though not without a good deal of disgust at his odious face and worse odour, “a word with you.”

  “Monsieur,” said the hangman very softly, and looking sideways at me with his watery eyes, which you could barely see through all the fat surrounding them, “you’re not s’posed to speak with me.”

  “A word is all I ask.”

  “Monsieur, I’m not going to listen to you,” he said, turning his head away piously.

  “Five écus for you, if you’ll agree that, before you put the rope around the girl’s neck, you’ll put your thumb on her neck and break it. That way she’ll die suddenly and you’ll string up a dead person on your gibbet.”

  “’Fraid that’s not possible. The judge didn’t order that.”

  “Ten écus.”

  “Monsieur, if I go against the jud
ge’s orders I’ll lose my job.”

  “Who’d know? The captain can’t hear us.”

  “Ah, Monsieur, my conscience!”

  “Fifteen écus.”

  “Monsieur, everyone has their weaknesses,” said Vignogoule with feigned humility. “For me, it’s the pleasure of watching the victim slowly strangle at the end of my rope.”

  Hearing these odious words, I was nearly beside myself, and cried, “Twenty écus, villain, to comfort your villainous soul.”

  “Monsieur,” said Vignogoule, with a wonderfully false humility, “my soul is not so ugly. What I said comes from the deep love for my profession. Moreover, twenty écus seems pretty paltry when you consider the great friendship you seem to have for the wench.”

  I thought I was going to be sick at hearing the vile baseness of his sentiments, so I decided that money alone wasn’t going to seal the bargain and that I needed a little iron in my arsenal to scare the wretch. “Villain,” I suggested, frowning and speaking as rudely as possible, “do you know who I am?”

  “Monsieur,” said Vignogoule, eyes lowered in a way that was both servile and menacing, “who doesn’t know you? And did we not almost get to know each other even better? I’m told you dig up graves to cut people up. I’m even told you shot Cabassus at the stake.”

  “That wasn’t me. But whoever had the front to do that would have no trouble killing a hangman.”

  “Ah!” rejoined Vignogoule. “You realize that it’s a capital crime to kill an executioner.”

  To which I hissed, “It was a capital crime to kill the condemned man. And whoever dared to do that would have no trouble with the other.”

  At this, Vignogoule threw me a quick glance through his watery eyes and lowered his heavy lids. I looked at him in turn. His fat face, like a huge block of mud, having both its colour and consistency, made no reaction, but I could see the reins in his enormous hands begin to tremble.

  “Villain, did you hear what I said?”

  “My noble Monsieur,” he said softly, with a loud sigh that swelled his enormous chest, “I would beg you to consider this: if I am to put my thumb where you asked me to, on her throat, the bitch won’t suffer any pain. She would die instantly. But that’s not an execution, it’s a vulgar murder, which is unheard of and despised by my art, and brings dishonour on me.”