City of Wisdom and Blood

by Robert Merle

  After a moment, I heard a step behind me, and thought at first it was my beloved Samson, but when I turned around I beheld Father Anselm.

  “My son,” he said in a grave voice, “you seem very troubled in your conscience. I know, of course, that you and the reformists reject confession, but if, without any of the apparatus—the prayers and absolution that accompany confession—you’d like to tell me, now that we’re in the teeth of this great peril, what is so tormenting you, you might feel some comfort having shared it with a friendly ear.”

  “Oh, Father Anselm,” I said, touched as I was by his tone, and speaking in all sincerity, “I am a Huguenot, and not accustomed to confession, or even to confidences. I seem to have no appetite for such things. My Huguenot conscience is like a dark closet in which I’ve locked up tight my most bitter worries, which sometimes come out to torture me in the most grievous fashion. But I think I’ve lost the key to let them out and be done with them.”

  I thought Father Anselm was going to press his advantage, but instead, placing his hand on my shoulder, he said only, “My religion is more open to human failings than yours is. But I’m not trying to vaunt it. I know all too well the abuses that it has allowed to infest its vast body. Monsieur de Siorac, your hand. When we rejoin our companions, let us recite the paternoster since it’s the only prayer we have in common.”

  Which we did, out loud, standing in a circle, in fraternal meditation, as if, Huguenots and papists, we’d forgotten the murders and butcheries that separated us.

  Father Anselm ordered us to dismount about a quarter of a league from the encampment at the Mont de la Mère, where the bandits had fixed their rendezvous with Antonio.

  “If I’m not mistaken, the ambush should be pretty close by. Miroul,” he continued, turning to my valet, “go and see if you can see where they are. You’re quick and strong, as I’ve observed, and you’re very handy with a knife. Don’t attack the group, my son, but if you come upon a lookout, dispatch him.”

  It was growing dark when Miroul returned, pale and panting. “I had to kill a sentinel,” he said as he regained his breath, “who surprised me, and I feel bad for him, nasty rogue though he was. As for the ambush, they’re hiding on the left side of the path that leads to the camp, about 600 paces from us. There are five knaves, lying in a trench with branches on their backs, and I wouldn’t have seen them if one of them hadn’t stretched from fatigue and shown himself.”

  “Miroul,” I asked, “did you get as far as the encampment?”

  “Yes. There are about ten of them, not keeping watch, sitting around in front of an old ruin, where they must have the Montcalms imprisoned.”

  “So, there are ten of them and that’s a lot,” said Father Anselm, putting a quarrel in his crossbow. “It’s going to be hot. Siorac, let’s split up. The monks and I will take care of the ambush, attacking them quietly with our crossbows, which won’t alarm the larger group. Meanwhile, go round the encampment, through the woods, and take them from behind. But don’t attack until you hear the whistling of our crossbows, and then fire on them with your pistols. You can fight a bear more easily from a distance than up close, as everyone knows!”

  Father Anselm was better at strategy than at maths, for there were only four monks and five bandits in the ambush trench, and when four of the latter were pierced by the crossbow quarrels, the fifth leapt out of his hiding place and fled before they could restring their weapons. Running wildly to the encampment, he passed within ten paces of us in the underbrush, and Miroul, seeing him pass, drew his knife to throw it, but unfortunately, before I could stop him, Antonio aimed his arquebus at the wretch, fired and dropped him in his tracks. The shot exploded in the underbrush with such force that it left us aghast.

  “Ah, Antonio,” I cried, “you’ve spoilt everything! We’ve lost the chance to surprise them! Have at them, now! And fast! Speed is our only recourse!”

  But, sadly, the alert had been given and the rascals were waiting for us with their arms at the ready. We fired our pistols, but when they were empty, we had to unsheathe our swords and fight hand to hand with ten bloodthirsty rogues, and because we had already engaged them up close, when the monks arrived with their crossbows they couldn’t fire without risking hitting us. However, they made marvellous use of their swords and shields, all the time hurling terrible imprecations at their enemies, damning the brigands to hell and damnation. As there were now only three of the enemy left, these attempted to flee, but, sadly for them, they stopped to pick up the crossbows they’d dropped, and the monks were able to shoot two of them. The third got away, but didn’t get very far, as I shall relate.

  Thinking the day was ours, and the encampment without any defenders, I burst into the house and saw one of the bandits, knife raised, ready to dispatch Monsieur de Montcalm. But I was quicker, and ran his neck through with my sword. But at the same moment, another of the rogues, whom I hadn’t seen, delivered a terrible blow with his pike that my armour deflected onto my left shoulder, and this man fell in his turn, Miroul pinning him to the wall with a throw of his knife. As for me, I felt as though I’d been viciously punched in the shoulder and that was the extent of it.

  Monsieur de Montcalm was lying with his hands tied to a leg of the table, his face ashen, but quite calm, and Father Anselm, coming in just then, cut his bonds with his cutlass, while Miroul and I tried to untie the women. Strangely enough, Monsieur de Montcalm’s first words were for his daughter rather than his wife, whose bonds I was trying to break. “Angelina, are you all right?”

  “Yes, my father, I am,” said Angelina in a light, sing-song voice that sounded deliciously like music to my ears after the terrible shouts of the bandits and the curses that the monks had hurled at their enemies, not counting mine, which I wasn’t even conscious of having shouted in the heat of battle.

  “But, Monsieur!” gasped Angelina, whose face was very close to mine as I was untying her. “You’re wounded! You’re bleeding!”

  “It’s nothing,” I protested, feeling no other pain than the blow I’d received, and quite astonished by the extraordinarily sweet look Angelina was giving me.

  “But, Monsieur,” she said again as she stood up. “You’re wounded! You’re bleeding badly!”

  But then I looked down at my left arm, and seeing red from the top to the bottom of the sleeve of my doublet, I was suddenly aware of both a terrible pain and debilitating weakness, and, immediately feeling faint, I would have fallen had not Angelina held me up. Then Father Anselm, stretching me out on the table and giving me some spirits from his gourde, dashed some of this alcohol on the wound at my request, which was not pleasant, before he and Samson bandaged me up, the latter seriously limited in his attempt to help by the tears that were blinding him.

  I scarcely remember how I was able to get myself onto my horse and return to the Château de Barbentane, so dazed was I. As soon as I was comfortably installed in a bed, Monsieur de Montcalm sent for a doctor, but I sent this ignoramus away since he wanted to bleed me—as if I hadn’t lost enough blood already! He also wanted to purge me, as if he believed that to cure my arm he needed to empty my intestines! At this point, we learnt that in Beaucaire there was a surgeon-barber who’d studied under Ambroise Paré, and I asked Monsieur de Montcalm to send for him. And this barber did very well, indeed, contenting himself with cleaning my wound with brandy, rebandaging it and giving me some opium to ease the pain.

  The battle had cost us three of our people: Antonio, one of the monks and the valet who was watching our horses and did so badly at it that one of the escaping bandits surprised him and fled on one of the monks’ steeds—a wonderfully bad choice, since Miroul leapt on his Arabian, caught up with him in less than an hour and dropped him with a pistol shot. As for the wounded in our troop, there were many. With the exception of Miroul and my beloved Samson, almost all had some injury, although the others were less serious than mine.

  Monsieur de Montcalm came to visit me every morning in my room and than
ked me profusely for having saved him, his wife and his daughter—these last, moreover, not just from death but also from dishonour. He was a tall man with very bushy eyebrows and an imposing face but a good heart, although he was somewhat narrow-minded and held too closely to his Catholicism, which I realized from a few words that escaped him and that convinced me that he would have liked me better if I’d shared his religious views. These were, no doubt, the reason he was held in such umbrage by the Huguenots of Nîmes, who would have killed him, I fear, if he hadn’t fled in time.

  Monsieur de Montcalm was very devoted to his daughter, who was his only remaining child, but whom he often quarrelled with, since both had very quick tempers. And each of them would become as obstinate as rams in their arguments, locking horns and refusing to give ground. These quarrels were, I imagine, their way of expressing the great love they had for each other, and which they would have been quite embarrassed to express in any other way. As for Madame de Montcalm, who, verbally at least, shared her husband’s views, she seemed very kind, but carried in her heart a sad longing for the happiness she’d never really enjoyed as a girl, and was very dedicated to sharing her daughter’s delights, basking in her happiness while taking some umbrage at it. All of which seemed to make her very mercurial, sometimes approving her daughter’s behaviour, at other times thwarting the same tendencies.

  Monsieur de Montcalm came to visit me at ten every morning, Madame de Montcalm at noon and Angelina during the afternoon: which made my mornings seem very long, so much so that I tried to shorten them by sleeping a lot. However, as my strength gradually returned, my sleep gave way to daydreams that grew in intensity the more I looked forward to seeing Angelina each afternoon.

  Angelina enchanted me by the marvellous tenderness in her eyes, which was clearly not feigned, as it might have been in other girls, but seemed wholly natural to her and reflected her deeply angelic character, for she looked on everything and everyone with the same grace and benign compassion. She felt genuine sadness at others’ pain or loss, including the death of a mouse or a sparrow, and greeted everyone she met with the same instinctive goodwill, even the most bitter and nasty of characters who were ill-disposed towards her, and, rather than return their spite, pitied them and pardoned the injury the instant she received it. As for the eyes through which this generous soul was revealed, they were large, languid, widely spaced and of a deep, black, oriental colour, as if there were some Saracen or Sephardic ancestry in the Montcalm family. Her nose was on the strong side, but without disturbing the harmony of her fair features, and her curly tresses framed her face with a Venetian tint of red.

  My room was large and well lit by two leaded windows facing south, and was situated at the end of a long corridor, which allowed me to hear the approach of my visitors, and I amused myself by recognizing the footsteps of each of them, and sometimes mistook one person’s steps for those of another, but never Angelina’s. For Angelina, being one of those tallish women who are by nature slow and phlegmatic (except when she was angry), walked, despite her long legs, with such astonishing languidness that she would take but one step in the time I might take three.

  Monsieur de Montcalm got in quite a state of anxiety at Barbentane when he learnt how François Pavée had looted his lodgings in Nîmes. He wrote to the parliament in Aix, complaining bitterly about this damage, and they responded in their wisdom that everything would be restored to order after these damnable excesses, when the king’s authority had been re-established in that city. But this was not to be, for we were heading towards civil war, and the two sides appeared to be at equal strength for the moment. And so Monsieur de Montcalm, uneasy, stumbling along, too idle and muddle-headed, tried to manage his estate at Barbentane, where, it seemed to me, he was much less successful than the Brethren at Mespech, lacking their Huguenot virtues of economy.

  He liked me well enough despite my religion and admired the fact that, in the bloom of my youth, I’d already had so many adventures, and, to distract him, he’d get me to tell him about them. When Angelina heard about this, she was very dismayed, since, given that her mother slept so late, she had to supervise the chambermaids during the time of her father’s visits with me. In her dealings with her servants she displayed infinite kindness, but they always obeyed her every command out of love and respect for her.

  “Ah, Monsieur de Siorac!” she said, sitting on the stool next to my bed one afternoon, “I’m so disappointed that my household duties prevent me from hearing the stories you tell my father every morning!” Saying this without the slightest coquetry, or consciousness of the sweetness of her look, she looked at me with her deep, black eyes, which were so tender that you had only to glimpse them to feel you’d never get enough of their radiance.

  “Oh, Madame,” I replied, “I’m at your service and would be only too happy to repeat these stories, if it would amuse you, during your afternoon visits.”

  “Oh, would you?” she said with such vivacity and joy that I could suddenly envision the little girl in her I’d never known.

  “Of course!”

  “And it wouldn’t tire you out too much?”

  “Not at all!”

  “Ah, Monsieur de Siorac, you’re too kind!”

  She said no more, being somewhat unskilled in speech, and displaying in our conversations that same languid distraction she had when she walked. And yet, when she trusted me completely, which would not take long, she talked much more freely.

  Since my stories required more time than the brief visits Angelina was accustomed to, we had to ask Monsieur de Montcalm’s permission to extend her afternoons with me. He granted it, took it away, gave it back again, demanded to be present, got tired of listening to stories he’d already heard, left, returned and, ultimately, left us alone for as long as we wished.

  For Monsieur de Montcalm, I wove very serious, ceremonial stories; when necessary, very repentant and moral tales that were careful to appeal to his papism. But for Angelina, as soon as her father had thrown in the towel, I told much livelier stories though ad usum delphinae—well within what a young woman should hear—in which my lovers became mere friends; the conversations were of an innocence of which she who listened to them was a model. By now I was able to get up and move around, though I could as yet not move my left arm to gesticulate appropriately, and mimed my adventures, marching here and there in the room as if it were a stage, changing tone and voice to imitate my characters. Angeline drank all of this in with both eyes and ears and, living the adventures I was recounting, suffered or rejoiced, imitating my expressions, living my life and paling terribly when the story of the gravedigging and mercy killing of Cabassus put me in such danger of being burnt at the stake.

  “Oh, Pierre!” she exclaimed. “What troubles! What incredible dangers! How I tremble for you!” And her eyes would fill with such tender compassion that I would be too overcome by their maternal concern to find my words.

  She remained agitated even when we were apart at night and in the morning, and every afternoon she’d ask me an embarrassment of questions, which would have been indiscreet if she who asked them hadn’t been so naive.

  “But, Pierre,” she said, “why did you visit Madame de Joyeuse so often? What interest could you possibly have had in an such an old woman well over the age of thirty?”

  “She taught me many things,” I said without batting an eyelid. Which was, of course, true, but not in the sense I allowed her to believe.

  Samson might have taken umbrage at my constant commerce with Angelina had Monsieur de Montcalm not taken a liking to him and invited him to go hunting every day after our midday meal. Not that Samson had much taste for the murder of feathered and furry beings that men practise in these parts, but he would not have wanted to offend his host by turning up his nose at this amusement. Moreover, he was dying of boredom in Barbentane, being so far from Maître Sanche and from the apothecary studies that he’d become so passionate about, which surprised me, since I couldn’t understand how
anyone could maintain such a love for such inert things. Certainly, if it were me, I would not have failed to respond to the flirtations of the chambermaids of the chateau, some of whom were quite pretty, and seemed available enough and were visibly enamoured of his bewitching beauty. But they might as well have been flirting with pretty images in a book! The poor wenches were all but transparent: Samson didn’t notice them. Nor did he notice Angelina, which annoyed her at first, since she was accustomed to receiving attention from the men around her.

  “Pierre,” she said one day, “where does Samson come by this immense disdain of the beautiful sex? I might as well be a witch’s broom given how coldly he looks at me. Is he one of those unfortunates who doesn’t love women?”

  “Not at all. He loves one. The rest don’t interest him.”

  “Is she so beautiful?” asked Angelina, looking at me for the first time with a hint of coquetry.

  “She is, but not as beautiful as some women I could name.”

  Hearing this, Angelina lowered her pretty eyes, and rising to go (my story for the day having come to an end) she wished me a good evening, and with her usual languor left my room, though I certainly couldn’t fault the slow pace with which she did so, since it afforded me more time to watch her depart.

  My brother wasn’t entirely without anything to do: he was trying to write to Dame Gertrude du Luc, and, sweating blood and water, managed to tie a few sentences together, bringing them to me each morning for my corrections, very annoyed that I’d categorically refused to write his letters for him. But, without telling him why, I’d been obstinate in my refusal ever since she’d left, being disgusted by her betrayal of my brother with Cossolat—and all the more so since, in order to resist her advances, I’d had to armour my virtue: not an easy thing for me.