Jacob Delpech endeavoured to remain as dignified as possible to show the onlookers he was not a broken man, for he rode with God. It nevertheless came as no small relief to see, at the end of the lane, a bridge over a moat that led to the round tour de Constance, an impressive and impenetrable vestige of medieval times, and his new prison.
The massive stone tower, walls six yards thick and thirty yards high, housed two dim vaulted chambers, one on each floor. The prisoners were divided into two groups according to their sex. The women and girls were placed downstairs where only a feeble light entered through the arrow slits, but at least they were out of the still sweltering evening sun. The men were conducted to the vast room above. In each room they were welcomed by a dozen or so prisoners that had previously arrived.
The intendant’s subdelegate had thoughtfully arranged for the reformists to be handed abjuration certificates before the next leg of their long and perilous voyage, a voyage which would take them to America. A woman with a baby at her breast, and an old peasant woman in clogs who wanted to die on French mainland, signed their conversion. They were instantly set free, at least, in body, for their hearts would be bound in the prison of self-reproach.
Jacob was glad that, by the grace of God, Jeanne had not been made to endure such a soul-destroying place. However, the conversions did not trigger a wave of signatures as the subdelegate had hoped. Instead, despite imminent exile and possible death, one lady broke into a psalm and was joined by the other women.
The well of light that ran through the centre of the building carried the soft voices to the upper chamber. The sweet music could not fail to lift the men’s hearts, and Jacob broke into song himself. Other men joined in the psalm until the whole tower, to the indignation of guards and officials, resonated like a cathedral of singing parishioners.
It occurred to Jacob that he, like every one of them there, may sometimes feel downhearted, but mostly they were happy in themselves in that they had remained faithful to their conscience. They were suffering for the highest reward. They were the resistants.
*
Their song could be heard across the walled city and had the power to move many new Catholics to pity and envy.
‘We cannot sit here and carry on our work with falseness in our hearts as if we were not affected,’ said Jean Fleuret to his wife when the singing started. His voice was stern but searching. ‘It’s as if we never had a conscience in the first place… What god would want such hollow souls in his great kingdom?’
They were seated around a sturdy timber table with their three children – two boys, eight and thirteen, and a girl of eleven – and were halfway through their meal. The windows were wide open, with a mosquito gauze placed in the frame, and the land breeze was a welcome refreshment. But the bread had stayed soft, which meant a storm was brewing. However, if it came, at least it would clear the air and the southern sun would become more clement than before.
The Fleurets thanked the Lord every day at meal time for their pleasant climate, their modest two-storey stone dwelling, for the bread on the table and the ham in the larder. But what was the sun or the rain to a man who had sold his soul for life’s comforts? Too well had they come to know death and had learnt to accept it as an integral part of their short existence. They had lost three children, two of whom had reached the age of ten.
‘I feel like I let mine fly out of me like a butterfly,’ said Madame Fleuret, a robust woman with a natural generosity in her round face and smiling eyes. ‘But like a butterfly it keeps coming back to the same spot, then off it flies again before I can catch it.’
Jean stood up. He strode to the sink, pulled out the gauze above it, and closed the windows. He turned around and in a grave voice he said, ‘I think you were right, my Ginette, I think we ought to leave. I don’t want to look back with remorse at my life when the time comes, I want to trust in the future of His kingdom.’ He strode back to his chair and sat down. Gesturing with his large, leathery hands, he said, ‘Listen, Gigi, I think I can find work in Geneva. In fact, I’m sure of it. Monsieur Grosjean is doing well I’ve heard, and he would need a good carpenter.’
‘Jeannot, oh my Jeannot,’ said Ginette clasping her hands together. ‘I can feel my butterfly coming back!’
‘You mean you don’t mind?’
‘Don’t mind? I’ve been praying so hard for you to change your mind about staying that I’ve got blisters on the palms of my hands.’
‘Hah,’ chuckled Jean Fleuret, ‘and I’ve been praying every night for the Lord’s enlightenment, and for you to tell me you wanted to leave!’ They laughed together, content in their new resolution.
The family made their secret plans. Then the carpenter said, ‘Let us pray for our brothers and sisters in the tower, who endure and set the example to us all of true religious fervour and trust in our Lord. And for them was laid in store the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. Amen.’
Such manifestations of faith as the song of the tower of Constance did not create a rebellion, but did cause many to seek exile rather than live the sham of a false Catholic.
*
Jacob had only ever made two return journeys over water. Once as a young man to London with his father who attended medical lectures there, and more recently for business on the post boat which carried passengers from Toulouse to Bordeaux. He had detested every moment of the two day trip along the river Garonne and was sick travelling both there and back. How would he fare on the great seas? Until this day he dared not even think about it, he had put it all to the back of his mind, instead filling it with prayer, psalms and thoughts of his wife and children.
While in his dungeon in Cahors the intendant of Montauban had visited him with a blank abjuration certificate and news of his children’s removal. Though the intendant had willingly used Delpech as an example to would-be bourgeois resistants, Jacob’s dispossession and imprisonment had been nonetheless a niggling source of bitterness in the otherwise resounding victory of the state over the so-called Reformed Church. His conversion would be the cherry on the cake.
But prior to the visit Jacob had already received a message about Jeanne’s misfortune. The note had been handed to him by an old woman — the same old woman who brought him articles of need such as a blanket, writing material, fresh straw, and who had passed him a brazier to warm him on the coldest nights.
He knew at least his children would be in safe keeping with his friend and brother-in-law until it pleased God for him to reunite with them. There was no way he could become a Catholic, no more than he could turn lead into gold. Visiting priests, false converters and other merchants of virtue had not made him convert, neither would the intendant.
The week after the intendant’s visit, Jacob was on his way to Montpellier, then to Aigues-Mortes, and now, two days after his incarceration in the round tower, he was about to embark on a tartan. The small, single-mast ship, rigged with a lateen sail and a jib, was to ferry him and the other prisoners to Marseille.
For the crew it was a lucrative activity, more constant than fishing, and less dangerous than carrying merchandise across the pirate-infested waters of the Mediterranean Sea. Some of the matelots were indifferently cordial in their behaviour towards the prisoners. Others used them to vent all the bitterness of their existence.
One seasoned matelot in particular looked forward to these little voyages. He unrestrainedly aimed his witty discourse at the vulnerable prisoners while achieving self-gratification by entertaining his fellows with his endless verve. It began the very minute the captives were placed in the hold when a young lady, no more than sixteen, had the misfortunate of asking this sailor with a benevolent grin and an epicurean twinkle where they were bound. Then he showed his true colours when, in a melodious southern accent, he said: ‘From Marseille to Toulon, me lass, then through the treacherous straits of Gibralter to Cadix. That’s if you don’t get taken by Algerian pirates. Then it be a true and wondrous seafaring voyage that awaits y
ou, my dear, all the way to the other side of the world. That’s if you get through the raging winds they call hurricane, that whips up the waves as tall as houses, mark my word!
‘Oh, aye, I been and seen with me own eyes, see. And I escaped with me life, I did. Then, if you don’t get gobbled up by the great creatures that lurks ‘neath the ocean waves, they’ll set you down on a desert island so you can think of home. That’s if you don’t get eaten by the cannibals and the giant insects as big as my hand!’ He held out his hands as if clutching pears and burst into a piraty chuckle. The girl looked squarely at the matelot with pity, as the sailors standing nearby held their bellies in unashamed laughter.
Neither savages nor creatures worried Jacob as he endeavoured to steady himself with every crack of the ship’s timbers. Already the gentle sway was brewing a storm in his belly. No, what really worried him was the appalling feeling of seasickness.
The two days and nights that ensued were, for Jacob, worse than the damp, dark, cold two years he had spent behind bars. Under the Mistral wind the vessel pitched and rolled. While the captain and his crew fought to control the ship in the raging sea, all the captives could do was kneel amid the creaking timbers and pray that they would survive the terrifying battering.
Jacob was not the only one to hold his belly in spasms of vomiting. Nearly all of the prisoners became sick. Anyone who was not ill from the swell, soon became so from the stench of vomit and diarrhoea.
It was a harsh baptism of the sea for most. But the seaworthy among them gave reassurance that the passage to the Americas in this season was rarely so rough, and that, contrary to what the sailors might say, the Caribbean hurricane season would be over by the time they left Cadix. Jacob gave praise to the Lord for this preparation, which nonetheless, had strengthened his courage now that he had been put to the test once.
Two days after leaving Aigues-Mortes, the tartan sailed between the impressive forts of St Jean and St Nicolas, and over the massive defensive chain that assured the protection of the Mediterranean port of Marseille.
(ii)
Throughout her husband’s confinement in Cahors, Jeanne remained hidden in her recess near Villemade. In this way she could arrange for him to receive items for his rudimentary comfort, and was able time and again to exhort him to perseverance, despite his solitude and estrangement from loved ones.
The proximity to Montauban also meant she could receive regular news of her children who, after an arduous administrative procedure, were now in the care of her sister and brother-in-law. She missed them terribly, and desperately endeavoured every day to keep their faces vivid in her memory.
But one day — it was a Sunday because Marie was not chatting at her spinning wheel — she could no longer see her baby’s face. She could only vaguely recall that first smile when she held her in her arms after her childbirth, and which had helped her bear up to the terrible circumstance of her persecution. But she could no longer call to mind Isabelle’s face.
And what of her other children? Would her face fade from their memory as Isabelle’s had slipped from hers? Shut away in her recess, she sobbed with visceral pain and thrust her fist in her mouth to keep herself from wailing out. Anyone wandering near the little mud brick farm building at that time would have heard muffled animal-like howls, but thankfully there was no one. And no one expected to find Jeanne Delpech de Castanet anywhere in the country, let alone in the countryside of Montauban.
Once it had been assumed that Jeanne had fled the realm, Cordelle had found pretext to employ Marie at his workshop, and she often stayed there late into the night so that she could pass on his lessons in weaving to Jeanne.
‘Ô boudiou, tongues may wag but at least it keeps their minds off me lady,’ she had said to Jeanne one night. ‘And besides, the weaver in’t such a bad catch neither!’ They had both laughed.
Marie went to church that Sunday, as she did every Sunday according to the law, more to avoid unwelcome attention than through love of the Roman church. That evening, when she had closed the shutters, drew down the bed and pulled away the panel of the recess, it was a drawn and distraught lady who greeted her, the very opposite of the woman that Marie had come to admire. Complaining over one’s lot was not in Jeanne’s breeding, but Marie’s forthright questioning soon brought out what had been preying on her lady’s mind.
‘Have you ever had a portrait done, Madame?’ she said, perched on her spinning chair.
‘I have,’ said Jeanne, seated on the edge of the bed, ‘five years ago. My husband insisted on it for posterity. Family, past, present and future means everything to him, you see.’
‘And a good job too,’ said Marie who spoke in patois, as did Jeanne more and more often nowadays – you never knew who might be listening outside in the dark. ‘Then they won’t forget you if your sister hangs it somewhere they can see it every day, will they?’
Marie’s bright idea gave Jeanne new wings and instantly brought the colour back to her cheeks as she took up her seat at the loom for another lesson in threading.
When, the following week, Suzanne received news of Jeanne’s anxiety, she managed to retrieve her sister’s portrait which she hung up on the wall at the top of the stairs. Then she came up with her own idea that would help bring Jeanne’s children back to her, at least in thought. Robert immediately took it up and commissioned an artist to make sketches of the children.
A few weeks after Jeanne’s horrid realisation of the passing time, the weaver handed her the scrolls. He politely turned his head away as tears of joy rolled down her cheeks. Marie, who was ‘working late’, touched her shoulder. What joy to behold her children, and her baby again, albeit on paper. How they had changed.
*
It was these drawings that she treasured most when the time came for her to make a move out of the kingdom. She folded them carefully and slipped them into a leather wallet. Jacob’s transfer from Cahors meant her presence in Villemade was no longer indispensable and she realised it would be creating unnecessary risks for her host if she remained, especially in light of the punishment that awaited anyone found harbouring a Huguenot.
Not only that but she sensed a nascent romance between Monsieur Cordelle and Marie which the kind-hearted man felt visibly awkward about, given the difference in age. But Marie seemed available and willing and he had been an heirless widower for long enough. Jeanne was glad in the thought that at least her stay had brought hopes of marriage to the girl who had given her so much of her time.
On a star-studded night in August, after a tearful farewell to Marie, who was working late, Jeanne left the Quercy plain for the first time in her life.
(iii)
The harbour was hardly a sight for sunken spirits, even though it lay still as a millpond. As Jacob climbed down to the water’s surface where a rowboat was waiting, he saw it was in fact the most nauseating broth, thick with human sludge, floating matter of all sorts, and drowned rats.
The little Phocean town sprawled out westward of the port and up the hillside called colline des Accoules. It was made up of a quaint confusion of three and four storey dwellings where cords ran between upper floor windows to accommodate rows upon rows of washing above the streets. The windmills, posted like white sentinels along the high ground, confirmed the wind was well up, which thankfully swept away the insalubrious pong.
But as Jacob took his place in the boat that faced east, his eyes were met with a coordinated display of grandeur in the form of the recently built galley arsenal, lit up by the westering sun. The immaculate buildings, some still under construction, stood as a stark contrast to the chaotic urbanisation of the town, and as a testimony to the King’s magnificence.
The arsenal, purposely built for the construction of the King’s galley fleet, was a pool of activity with carpenters, rope makers, joiners, sail makers, riggers, caulkers, riveters – a host of tradesmen and labourers required to build a galley ship. Once ferried to shore, Jacob was marched with the cortege of prisoners towar
d the white arsenal building.
Along the way he saw with his own eyes a galley ship with its rows of great oars. He counted twenty-six on one side which made fifty-two in all. The port harboured over twenty such vessels whose slaves, if near enough, glanced at the newcomers, some with envy. For they knew that these Protestants were going to the New World where they would at least be allowed to roam about unshackled; a galley slave could not.
There were Turks and common convicts whose complicit laughter expressed camaraderie. And then there were the downcast ones who looked on with a silent longing. There is always someone worse off than oneself, thought Jacob and, while continuing his march onward, closed his eyes just for two seconds. The moment he opened them again they were seized by a familiar face on the greatest galley ship of all, la Grande Réale. The huge ship was manoeuvring only twenty yards from where Jacob was passing. The face stared back at him, and he recognised Monsieur Galet.
He was about to call out when the convert he met in his prison in Montauban gave a stern shake of the head. Delpech then realised there was no point attracting unnecessary attention which would be beneficial to neither of them. Even from this distance Jacob could read in the man’s demeanour expressions of pity, shame and remorse. He must have got caught trying to cross the frontier, he thought.
As Delpech marched past the galley ship both men gave a hardly perceptible sign that bade each other God’s grace and good fortune. They both knew they would probably never meet in this life again.
The cortege passed through the arsenal gates, over the impeccable courts strewn with cordage and sails, and past the workshops and depots stocked to the rafters with masts and timber.
Merchants of Virtue Page 10