by Robert Merle
It seemed to me there were but a dozen or so soldiers who were backing Simon, while the rest seemed to have no more appetite either for killing the bishop or for defending him. Nevertheless, among the former, there was one fellow who had an arquebus, and seeing him strike his flint to light his fuse, I sensed that things were taking a bad turn for Coussinal. Whispering to my companions that they might have to back me up if necessary, I stepped forward, a pistol in each hand, and said to the arquebusier, “Put out your fuse, my friend! Or I’ll turn your helmet into a sieve!”
This fellow, who doubtless had acquired some reputation in Nîmes as a marksman, laughed and shouldered his weapon, but in the instant he took aim at me, I fired and, as promised, I put a hole in his helmet, the bullet hitting it with such force that it was ripped from his head, and the poor wretch, thinking he was dead, dropped his weapon and fuse, and seized his head in both hands as if he’d been wounded.
“All right, friend, no need to scowl!” I cried. “You’re not hurt. Stamp out your fuse! Your skull isn’t as hard as your helmet, and see what I did to the helmet!”
“But who is this man?” cried Simon, crimson with surprise and anger. “Where’d he come from?”
“Simon,” I said, “I’ve just been to see Captain Bouillargues, who told me, I swear this on my salvation, that he had no orders from the judges to kill the bishop and that he doesn’t know what they’ve decided to do with him.”
“What?” cried Simon. “Are we going to have to wait all day for their decision? A bishop is a bishop! Robert Aymée ordered us to kill the man! That’s enough for me! Come on, mates, there are only two of them! Two traitors bought by the papists! Let’s rush them! Kill! Kill the traitors!”
I wheeled around and shouted: “Over here, my lads!” In the blink of an eye, not only Samson and Miroul, but Anicet, Guillaume and Louis were at my side, swords in hand, and surrounding the bishop.
“Monseigneur,” I said to Bernard d’Elbène, who throughout the preceding ruckus had remained on his knees in prayer, as peacefully as if he’d been in his chapel, “rise! We’re going to get you to a safe place, if we can.”
While I was speaking, Simon was screaming loud enough to crack his ribs. And his cries had brought about ten comrades to his side, but none seemed very resolute, nor inclined to precipitate an attack, fearing our firearms. And while Simon was harassing us with his screams and insults, Anicet and Coussinal had quietly consulted with each other on how best to protect the bishop from these fanatics, and the bishop, overhearing them, said that the most secure place would be the house of Jacques de Rochemaure, a lieutenant in the seneschalty, because he had a secret door in his house that communicated with the chateau, where he still had a garrison.
“Let’s head that way without delay,” I said. “Anicet will walk in front, with Guillaume and Louis, and the rest of us, who have pistols, will serve as rearguard.”
“Monsieur,” whispered Guillaume in my ear, “would it be all right if I go to fetch my loot before we leave?”
“Aviat, Guillaume! Aviat!”
He was back in a trice, carrying his loot under one arm and Louis’s under the other, which together made a fairly large pile of clothes, though they were bloodstained, I noticed with some disgust. All this time, Simon, the gnome, had been screaming his ear-splitting imprecations, hatred gushing from his eyes and venom from his lips. My father was right when he said, after the fighting in la Lendrevie, which was my first combat, that it’s always the most nefarious who incite people to mutiny, for they breathe in blood, exhale war and snort massacres. And ultimately, in the same way that wind starts the wings of a windmill moving, they incite others to murder and mayhem. I resolved to stifle this pestilent wind, and, taking one of Miroul’s pistols, since I only had one still loaded, I shouted, loudly enough to cover his voice:
“Simon, I forbid you to follow us! If you violate this order, my first ball will pierce your helmet and the second your skull!”
After that, he yelled some more, but made no effort whatsoever to follow us.
Seeing this, his henchmen didn’t move either, being worn out from their night of bloodshed and each one thinking only of getting back to his lodgings to eat a morsel, count his loot and, finally, to sleep. Which is, no doubt, also the reason that the streets we traversed to bring the bishop to Rochemaure’s lodgings were strangely deserted, despite the rising sun. The papists remained barricaded behind their walls, and the Huguenots had all gone home, glutted and exhausted from their sad exploits.
Jacques de Rochemaure’s door was heavily reinforced by iron bands, but there was a peephole in the upper part (also protected by an iron grid), which opened when we knocked. Monsieur de Rochemaure, seeing us armed, hesitated, and when the bishop saw this, he stepped forward and explained that we had saved him from the hands of his executioners and asked that we be admitted. But Rochemaure refused, fearing a trick and that the bishop was being forced to speak.
He asked us to withdraw to the end of the street, about fifty paces away, and to leave the bishop alone, and on this condition he’d open the door. Bernard d’Elbène took his leave of us in the most touching way, asking each of us our names, thanking each of us and assuring us that he would never fail to remember us in his morning and evening prayers, reminding us that we worshiped the same God, despite the fact that it often did not appear to be true. We left him, and waited at the end of the street until the door had opened and closed behind this holy man, who, as he entered this sanctuary, waved us a fond farewell.
The Michelade massacre came to an end with the failed execution of the bishop, as if the Huguenot judges (who had not ordered it, but wouldn’t have been sorry if it had happened) had been surprised that the mutineers had, in this case, mutinied against them.
The judges released, in exchange for huge ransom monies, the rest of the prisoners in the city hall dungeon, who numbered about forty, roughly sixty having perished at the bishop’s palace. And, after negotiations on 2nd October with the seneschal, Honoré de Grille, who still held the chateau, they allowed Bernard d’Elbène to leave the city under escort. The bishop withdrew to Tarascon, and there, he willed some lands he owned near Nîmes to the only one of his entourage to have survived, Jean Fardeau. And since he could no longer write, given the extreme weakness of his hands, he dictated a letter to the Vicomte de Joyeuse, in which he recounted in the most glowing terms the role I had played in his rescue. And when this letter was read, reread and published in Montpellier, I was suddenly rehabilitated in that city, and honoured as greatly as I’d previously been execrated, and both for the same reason, as I had done for the bishop nothing other than what I had done for Cabassus.
For my part, I believe that the greatest merit in this entire business was shown by Coussinal, who dared, with such marvellous courage, to confront, all by himself, a score of armed and angry men. I probably wouldn’t have acted if Coussinal hadn’t provided the example he did, moved as he was by compassion for this old man who demonstrated so much humanity in his last moments.
The three of us left Nîmes without further entanglements, exiting the city by the Carmes gate, and set off on the road named (God knows why) “five lives”, which led to Beaucaire.
There we planned to cross the Rhône in order to get to Tarascon, and from Tarascon to reach the Château de Barbentane, where the innkeeper had told us Monsieur de Montcalm, his wife and his daughter had fled when they’d escaped from Nîmes. Since I didn’t yet know of the reversal of my fortunes in Montpellier, I thought I should obey Monsieur de Joyeuse’s orders to reside with Montcalm, wherever he was, while I waited for permission to return.
My head was full of sad thoughts as we rode along, troubled as I was that it was the Huguenots who had committed the massacre this time, accustomed as we were, ever since Vassy, to be the victims of the papists rather than their executioners. I thought of what Socrates had said on his deathbed: “better to submit to injustice rather than commit it”, and decided he must be
right, so heavy was my heart after witnessing the murders in the courtyard of the bishop’s palace. At the same time, I found myself trying to justify their behaviour by the persecutions they’d endured before. Alas, my defence of them would have been much stronger if I’d been able to foretell what the papists would perpetrate on our people during the St Bartholomew’s night massacre—a butchery ordered by the king of France in his Louvre and not by a group of petty tyrants in Nîmes.
I shall not pursue this moral dilemma any further, since I cannot help being a party to the dispute while trying to judge it fairly. And it seems to me as I reread this that I’m making too many excuses for the reformists. In truth there is no excuse: blood does not excuse blood.
During the first day of our trip we made about six leagues. It’s true that the road was neither hilly, winding, nor uneasy. By evening, we’d reached Beaucaire, where we spent the night. But according to what we heard at the inn, the more mountainous region ahead, full of hills and dales and woods, had recently been taken over by highway robbers, who killed their victims and stripped them of everything they had. I thus resolved to set out at daybreak, hoping to reach the safety of Barbentane before dark. We made a forced march throughout the day, but I was quite dismayed to discover as we arrived at the chateau that our hosts were not there. Their major-domo, who had been notified by a rider of their flight from Nîmes, had been waiting for them in vain since the previous night, but he’d hesitated to set out to look for them since he was responsible for guarding the chateau, and because the bandits were so close by. His name was Antonio, and this small, dark-haired and twisted fellow seemed very attached to his masters. After having discussed the situation with him, I resolved to set out immediately to look for the Montcalms, leaving only our packhorse in Antonio’s care.
It was about two in the afternoon when, after having rested and fed our horses, we set out again, but only at a slow trot, as much to spare our horses as to scour the underbrush on both sides of the road through the la Montagnette woods for any sign of our friends.
We went from one end to the other of these woods without meeting anyone. At the far edge of the forest, there was an abbey that looked more like a fortress, with very thick walls. I galloped up to the gate and rang the bell, until the peephole opened and a monk, looking out at me with cold distrust, told me rudely that the abbey did not take in travellers, but that there was a good inn in Barbentane.
“My brother,” I replied, “I don’t need shelter. I’m staying at the chateau. I’m looking for Monsieur de Montcalm, who was supposed to have arrived there by now but hasn’t appeared.”
“What?” cried the monk, now very alarmed. “He’s not there? But we saw him last evening, as it was getting dark, with Madame de Montcalm and his daughter! They asked us for some wine and then left immediately. They must have fallen into the hands of the bandits who infest the la Montagnette woods that you just passed through. Monsieur, please wait a moment. I’m going to tell the prior.”
The delay was extremely aggravating, and all the more so since the prior, a sharp-eyed man with enormous eyebrows, took me into a little vaulted room with a portcullis, and, attended by two armed monks, asked me endless questions. “By the belly of St Anthony,” I thought, “what interrogators these monks and these ministers are!” Furious at all the time we’d wasted, I cut the confession short and showed the prior the letters from Monsieur de Joyeuse and Monsieur de Montcalm. It was an immediate open sesame!
“Ah, Monsieur,” said the prior, “now I believe you and I fear the worst. If the Montcalm family has fallen into the hands of those scoundrels, it’s going to be no little matter to rescue them. There are at least twelve of these desperadoes. There are only three of you. They know these woods extremely well. You’ll be like lost children in there. I’m going to give you Father Anselm and three of our brothers, both to guide you and to fight alongside you. There will be blood. These miscreants always ask for a ransom, but the minute they’ve got it, they murder the hostages and the messenger.”
Once we were on horseback, I took a good look at the monks the prior had sent to help rescue our friends and, to my great relief, I found nothing sanctimonious or canting about them. As far as I could tell, they’d slipped on a coat of mail under their cassocks, and wore large swords at their sides and on their backs round shields with a point in the centre that allowed them to be used as a weapon as well as a defence. But the best thing of all was that they carried crossbows that looked to be as old as the abbey itself, but which were well oiled and greased.
I rode up beside Father Anselm and looked at him out of the corner of my eye, trying to gauge him. He was round, but not soft; indeed his girth announced a good deal of strength, and his black hair was clipped as close as a field after harvest. He had a large nose, a prominent chin, and cheeks tanned dark by the sun: a master monk, more accustomed to the hunt than the reciting of paternosters all day long, and not a grain of hypocrisy in him, it seemed.
“Monsieur,” said Father Anselm, turning his large head in my direction and speaking with the jocular air of a peasant, “have you been studying me? Do I meet with your approval?”
“Indeed so!” I said, smiling.
“I’m glad! It’s mutual.”
“And yet I’m a Huguenot.”
“What do I care? Whoever fights with me doesn’t require a note of confession. Especially since you’re helping us defend our abbey!”
“How so?”
“My son,” replied Father Anselm with a humorous look in his brown eyes, “if Monsieur de Montcalm is killed, then these scoundrels will take his chateau, and if the chateau is taken, who will dislodge them? Especially in this time of civil wars when the king’s subjects are so concerned with cutting each other’s throats. Listen! If the chateau is in their hands, the village of Barbentane will be too. So, from the other side of the woods, they’ll storm the abbey, take it and pillage it.”
“Nicely reasoned,” I laughed, “and even though my aim is to save Montcalm, you won’t find me sorry to take this opportunity to be a good Catholic!”
The master monk burst out laughing at this, being of a naturally playful temperament, even when we were on the verge of battle.
“Father Anselm,” I said, “you’ve got a good sword and shield. But wouldn’t you like one of our pistols for fighting at a distance?”
“Thank you, no! We’ve got our crossbows and think they’re better than firearms.”
I liked this monk, and would have continued our conversation, but he made a sign for me to be quiet. Leaving the trail, he plunged into the underbrush, with me at his heels, and the others at mine. And indeed, listening very carefully, I heard, at some distance, along the path we’d been following, the faint sound of hoof beats. After a moment, with his hand still raised, Father Anselm said, leaving me amazed by his sharp hunter’s hearing, “There are three of them and one of the three is Antonio. I recognize his mare’s hoof beats.”
And it was indeed Antonio, followed by two swarthy valets, armed to the teeth, and who appeared as resolute to fight it out with the bandits as their major-domo, who, thin and bent though he might be, looked like no minor adversary, to judge by the fire in his eyes. For he was furious that the bandits had carried off his master from under his nose, on the very grounds of his chateau, which they’d been infesting for the last month like lice in a tramp’s hair, stealing, murdering and openly committing various other crimes. He explained that, just an hour earlier, one of these rogues had shouted up to him, from the other side of their moat, that he was to bring 1,000 écus to a camp at the foot of the Mont de la Mère if he didn’t want to see Montcalm’s head delivered on a stake at sundown.
“Have you got the ransom, Antonio?” asked Father Anselm.
“I have.”
“And you’re going to bring it to their camp?”
“I am.”
“But that’s madness! They’ll ambush you! As soon as you appear, they’ll kill you, take your money and ki
ll your masters. Dismount, Antonio, and come back with us away from the trail.”
He did as ordered, and with our horses tied to the nearby branches, we sat down in a circle on some logs that the foresters had left there.
“We’ll have to ambush their ambush,” said Father Anselm, and, putting his elbows on his knees, he rested his head in his hands. He remained quietly thinking in this position for some time—so long in fact, that finally I asked:
“So what are we waiting for?”
“My son,” he replied without moving a muscle, “when you go hunting, you need to be patient. These rascals must have placed a spy who would have seen Antonio and his valets leaving the chateau. So they’ll be waiting for them on the path to the Mont de la Mère. Let them wait a while. Nothing confuses an ambush more than a long wait. We’ll surprise them at sundown.”
But for us the wait was pretty long as well, though we amused ourselves by watching Miroul throw his knife at a tree, a trick he excelled at, having learnt it from Espoumel. But Miroul got tired and sat down, and no one felt like talking, so we just sat there quietly looking at the ground, each of us reluctant to share his emotions with the others. For there was every reason to think that the battle would be very bitter against these desperate rogues and that more than one of us might be wounded or left dead on the field.
As for me, I prayed to the Lord that if I were to appear before him this day, that He would forgive my sins, especially my sins of the flesh, for I didn’t think I was particularly sinful in other ways. And once my prayers were done, I began remembering the wenches I’d known who’d been so sweet to me, but couldn’t face thinking about Fontanette since that wound was so fresh.
And so I recalled my most pleasant memories of the sweet maids who, I realized, had been the guarantee of beauty and benevolence in my life, which, deprived of their presence, would have been such an arid path. And though I realized how worldly my musings were compared to the monks’, I gleaned a comforting warmth from them, and felt bathed in this warmth as if I were back in Barberine’s lap. But alas, that didn’t last. For as hard as I tried to avoid the memory of Fontanette, she burst suddenly into my mind and with such force and such anguish that I had to get up from the log and, turning away from my mates, walk into the underbrush with tears rolling down my cheeks.