In a Dark Wood Wandering

by Hella S. Haasse

  A plank had been laid over a few slaughtering blocks; on it stood those in charge here: Thomas Legoix and both his brothers and the butcher bosses, Saint-Yon and Thibert of the great slaughtering houses.

  The oldest Legoix, a giant of a man with a full florid face, kept his eyes fixed intendy on the door. From time to time he saluted those who entered with a distracted gesture and shook his head impatiently when his neighbor Thibert nudged him; it was obvious that he expected someone who had not yet arrived.

  “Begin now, Legoix, before it gets too dark,” said Thibert. “Surely you can still open your mouth. God knows the surgeon must be drawing blood somewhere. An hour from now we won’t be able to see each other’s noses here.”

  Legoix continued to shake his head.

  “What do I have torches for?” he asked sourly. The answer awoke interest; one of the men who stood around the plank—a peddler—shouted loudly, “Where do you get your torches from, Legoix? There isn’t a chip of wood anywhere in Paris. The people in my neighborhood are burning doors and window sills. Do you wander off to Saint-Denis to get kindling wood?”

  There was laughter, but without real humor; the effects of the long siege were beginning to be felt. Provisions in the city had run out quickly and the food supply had virtually ceased. As usual in bad times the herds of catde were the first to go; they were driven to safer quarters by the fleeing peasants to protect them from the besiegers and the roving packs of vandals. The cattle, pigs and sheep which had been wont to feed on the city ramparts had been slaughtered a year earlier to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Armagnacs. For the butchers and related guilds there was therefore precious little work; from time to time they saw an opportunity to bring, with a well-armed escort, a few hundred head of cattle into Paris from oudying districts. Legoix had made use of the encounter of both enemy armies at Montdidier to make hasty conveyance of another herd of cattle. But what did that signify in a city which yearly required 30,000 cattle and 20,000 sheep for subsistence? Prices had shot up fantastically; bread was nearly unobtainable at any price, and as for fruit and green vegetables—they simply did not exist. Those citizens who had gardens, plots of ground at their disposal, could save themselves; they had roots, potatoes, carrots, parsnips and herbs. A man of the people, however, had to do with less; he had to be content with the common people’s food in wartime: stinging nettles boiled in salt water.

  Thomas Legoix leaped from the platform, shoving aside the bystanders in his haste to reach a man who had just entered: the surgeon, Maitre Jean de Troyes. A murmur of satisfaction arose; the surgeon, a lean, dour middle-aged man with extremely penetrating dark eyes, was greatly respected in the butchers’ guild; he had connections in the University, was eloquent and was considered both clever and learned.

  He waved both his arms in greeting to this assembly and called out joyously, “God be with you, colleagues—for we are colleagues, aren’t we? In fact, we exercise the same calling.”

  He gave Legoix, who led him to the platform, a sidelong glance, and grinned derisively.

  “I belong to your guild, Legoix, because I can assert without hesitation that I bleed chiefly swine, catde and sheep. Greetings, Thibert; greetings, Saint-Yon; greetings, Legoix. Legoix,” he continued, waving his hand rapidly at the four men who already stood on the planks, “hoist me up, I am not as nimble as I was a year or so ago.”

  Thomas Legoix lifted the surgeon as though he were a child and then leaped onto the board himself. The uproar in the butchers’ hall had subsided somewhat; the men pressed closer around the slaughtering block, their faces raised. In the front rows stood the guildmasters, the owners of the workshops and factories, the heads of the various branches of the meat and hide industries; men of various ages: some arrayed in furs and rich cloth, others in work clothes. Behind the masters pressed the apprentices, for the most part youths and men from the lowest classes, big-boned, with coarse features, whose doublets and aprons seemed to be permeated with the fetid stench of the work rooms.

  The slaughterhouse was completely full; nevertheless still more spectators managed to squeeze inside: ragged students from the colleges of the University quarter, beggars and street loafers who had increased in number since the outbreak of war—they had apparently sensed that something was afoot. Even before Legoix’s servants could shut the doors of the slaughterhouse, a troop of vagrants, wrapped in rags, kicked and fought their way inside in frantic haste.

  “Men!” roared Thomas Legoix, crossing his sinewy arms, “men, I have something to tell you. The day after tomorrow we leave the city with Burgundy’s troops to attack the Armagnacs in Saint-Cloud.”

  A loud shout of approval greeted this announcement to which the butchers and their partisans had looked forward eagerly ever since the time, late in the summer, when they had accepted arms from Burgundy. Almost daily they patrolled Paris in groups, led by knights and horsemen from the retinue of Count de Saint-Pol, under the colors and emblems of Burgundy—a lily in the heart of a Saint Andrew’s cross against an azure field. They called themselves the army of Paris and marched with resounding steps through the streets.

  “More than 2,000 of us are expected at Saint-Jacques’ gate at midnight,” Legoix went on. “Captain Saint-Pol says there are not more than 1,500 Armagnacs lying in Saint-Cloud. Together with Burgundy’s men we are surely three or five times as strong.”

  “Give them hell!” shouted the students, who had climbed onto the cross beams under the roof; they sat there like a flock of famished crows.

  “The Armagnacs slander God and offend our beloved King Charles,” said Saint-Yon in his gruff, slightly cracked voice. “They cut off their prisoners’ noses and ears and say, ‘Go back to Paris and show yourself to your crazy king!’ ”

  “Long live the King!” The shouts reverberated under the arched roof. The butchers and journeymen and all the men who stood around the slaughter blocks took up the cry. They stamped on the floor and banged on the walls until the meat hooks jingled.

  “Yes, come on, long live the King!” A voice roared above the din. “Away with the Armagnac-loving officials and courtiers who give him bad counsel and stick his money in their purses. Away with Berry, the filthy traitor!”

  The man who shouted this was hoisted instantly onto the shoulders of the spectators. He was short and thick-set with a broad face disfigured by strawberry marks. He might have been considered deformed if the bundles of muscles on his neck and arms and his thick, somewhat bent fingers, had not betrayed a strength which dwarves and hunchbacks seldom possess. He had a short, flat nose with wide nostrils; his front teeth protruded so far forward that he could not close his lips. Despite his terrifying appearance, he was highly respected and to a certain extent feared by his comrades and the inhabitants of the Saint-Jacques quarter. When anything happened which frightened and upset people, he did not just grumble and complain like the others; he was always ready to resist with words and blows, to stand up for himself as well as for his friends and acquaintances. His name was Simon le Coutelier. He was nicknamed Caboche and was a skinner by trade.

  “By Christ’s blood, no more babble!” he roared, emphasizing his words with his raised fist. “We can curse and complain until we turn blue, brothers, but the court wolves and vultures don’t give a damn whether we are friendly to Armagnac or Burgundy now. Who is still so foolish as to believe that he will better himself by running after the Burgundians? Get to work, do your own job, lads! Kill those you hate and take what you can’t get any other way! What have the politics of the great lords to do with us? We must have grub, a fire on our hearth and money in our pockets, no matter what!”

  The servants and youths, the students on the crossbeams and the beggars and vagrants, thieves and pickpockets who stood in the back of the slaughter hall, struck up a deafening roar; knives flew from their sheaths and those who had staffs and cudgels flourished them wildly.

  “Simon, Simonnet!” boomed the students in chorus.

  �
�Caboche, you speak like a fool!” cried the surgeon in his high, shrill voice. “You would not go far in the world, man, if you insisted on having your own way every time. There is still room for more thieves and murderers in Montfaucon, even if plenty hang there already, God knows, in bundles like smoked fish, next to each other and above each other and below each other! If we seriously wanted to put an end to the sorry state of affairs, which I don’t need to describe, because we get up with anxiety and go to bed with misery—we would have to proceed some other way. All around us disorder and lawlessness are the order of the day; let us at least go to work deliberately and sensibly to create law and order. But first we must drive the Armagnacs from our gates with the help of Monseigneur of Burgundy’s troops. We can’t do anything while Paris is in danger.”

  “Do you think I have a mind to fight next to the English dogs?” screamed Caboche. “Once they have beaten off the Armagnacs they will try to make us a head shorter. Let us lie low, lads, and go our own way, that’s the safest course.”

  “Silence!” Thibert banged the platform angrily with his staff. “In God’s name how can we make up our minds if those fellows keep on screeching like that?” He turned to Legoix. “Tell them to hold their tongues. Let’s listen now without interruption to Maître de Troyes who speaks here in our name. Quiet!”

  Legoix had stood motionless, his arms crossed, after pushing the surgeon forward; he frowned, to be sure, when Caboche took the floor unbidden, but he said nothing. During the uproar which followed the skinner’s brief speech, he remained thoughtful, with an expression of uncertainty on his broad, florid face.

  “Aye, I don’t like it either,” he said abruptly to his friends on the platform. “It was an ugly thing for Monseigneur of Burgundy to have brought the English here. How will it end now? They know very well that we don’t like them; they couldn’t find quarters anywhere in the city. They won’t soon forget that either. I don’t trust them, these hard-headed sons of whores.”

  “Use your head, Legoix!” Maître de Troyes wheeled violently toward the owner of the Sainte-Geneviève slaughterhouse. “The English remain here as long as we need them to defeat the Armagnacs and not a day longer. If Monseigneur of Burgundy raises any objections to their departure, we are still here to remind him that we don’t want those bastards within our borders. Friends of England have never gotten far here; believe me, Legoix, the Duke knows that as well as we do. Listen, men!” de Troyes continued more loudly, “How often must I tell you: first we get rid of the Armagnac’s army and then we can insist that the Council and municipality be purged. We can go far with prudence and patience. Monseigneur of Burgundy needs us badly—don’t forget it! Our time will come; we will see to it that peace and prosperity return to every inhabitant of city and farm in France. If the King can’t listen or help us, what is to prevent us then from demanding another king for the sake of the people? Yes, it sounds like heresy…” He glanced quickly right and left at the astonished, angry faces of the heads of the guilds. “But I only repeat what such learned and devout doctors of the University as Maître Gerson and Maître d’Ailly have asserted all along, that a king who is incapable or evil can and should be dethroned!”

  Simon Caboche raised both his hands.

  “Then what are we waiting for, friends?” he yelled at the surgeon. “If it is as you say there, we don’t need to be ashamed. We are in good company. The big shots of the University you’ve just named will be sure to give us absolution if we accidentally cut a few more throats than are strictly necessary!”

  Thibert banged his truncheon again; Legoix, now really enraged, stepped to the edge of the platform and ordered the skinner to be silent and to put his feet on solid ground—Caboche still sat enthroned on the shoulders of his followers.

  “By the Devil, Legoix, do you support these tonsured fools?” Caboche half-closed his small, bloodshot eyes and opened his large mouth in a grimace. “What little dickey bird has chirped in my ear that you curse and damn the friars of Sainte-Geneviève day in and day out—didn’t they keep rapping your knuckles for selling meat during Lent?” He grimaced again at his audience. “And it’s obvious that you’ve gobbled up everything you’ve slaughtered in the past year, friend. You’re as fat as a pig before Christmas.”

  The beggars in the rear of the hall and the students on the beams burst into uncontrollable laughter.

  “To the meat hook with Legoix!” someone yelled.

  The butcher boss’s face turned red; he was at the point of leaping from the platform to attack Caboche, but he was held back by de Troyes and Thibert. With great effort he swallowed his anger and chose the wisest course, which was to join in the boisterous laughter.

  “I can see that you don’t understand politics, Simon Caboche,” the surgeon said acidly. He thought the skinner was a dangerous man; he did not like the way he sat grinning over the heads of his supporters in the calm awareness of his power. The surgeon decided to try intimidation through subde eloquence. “Violence breeds violence—haven’t you seen enough to know that yet? We shall restore order—but like thoughtful men, not like wild beasts. We don’t want a repetition of what happened here sixty years ago when the Provost Marcel stood up for the people’s rights. He was in too much of a hurry, he acted harshly and violently—and what were the results? Paris lost its privileges; the citizens were plundered more viciously than before. Let’s demonstrate that we’ve learned our lesson from the past. No brute force, no robbery and murder, Caboche. We’ll punish whoever needs punishing, but only after careful deliberation, and after trial.”

  Now that the uproar around them had diminished somewhat, the men became aware of sounds outside the butcher hall. The bells of Notre Dame were pealing; now the bells of Sainte-Geneviève church picked up the message; then Saint-Jacques, Saint-Pol, Saint-Germain PAuxerrois, Saint-Jean. One by one the churches, the cloisters and chapels joined in; the air was filled with the sounds of all the bells of Paris, large and small.

  “What can be going on there?” Thibert asked. “It’s still too early for vespers.”

  Not even Legoix’s servants, who entered the murky slaughterhouse with burning torches, could explain these solemn sounds; many of the men hurried outside to join the curious crowds filling the streets in the hope that Paris was suddenly about to be delivered from its besiegers. The peals lessened and died away; shortly after that, word began to circulate from the direction of the Grand Pont that Orléans and Armagnac had been excommunicated and declared oudaw in the church of Notre Dame because they had committed rebellion, robbery and sacrilege. The solemn ceremony had been performed, amidst the ringing of bells and with smothered candles, in the name of Urban, the new pope in Rome. The Duke of Burgundy had been present, along with several high dignitaries of the Church.

  “Did you know that, lads?” Caboche asked the men in the hall. He stood in the doorway, his hands under his apron. The students had lowered themselves from the crossbeams, ready at the first sign of trouble to dash away through streets and alleys to their own quarters. The tramps and beggars, who had been the first to vanish when the bells began to chime, had now unobtrusively turned up again. They liked to be near Caboche, whose bold comments gave them the opportunity to revile the authorities in public at the tops of their lungs, to shout complaints, curses and ridicule, to air emotions which must otherwise be prudently repressed.

  “Berry—the old swine—has also been declared outlaw,” the skinner said. “Was I right when I said the old greasebag was busy selling us hide and hair to the Armagnacs? Come with me to the Hôtel de Nesle, comrades, and let’s give him a professional skinning in his own courtyard!”

  The noisy crowd pressed around Caboche; a few students had already snatched torches from the rings on the wall. But Thomas Legoix, followed by his younger brothers, leapt forward from the group of guildmasters who stood in conference near the slaughter blocks.

  “Have you gone crazy, Simon Caboche?”

  Roughly, Legoix thrust aside the men
who had already drawn their knives, bent upon blood and booty—it was said that the vaulted cellars of the Hotel de Nesle were full of wine and salted meat.

  “Are you all stark mad? You couldn’t do anything more stupid! If you don’t know how to keep your hands to yourself and can’t obey our decisions, get out! Blockheads and rioters do our cause more harm than good!”

  “I don’t give a damn about your blather.” Caboche cursed and put his hands on his hips. “Where’s the grub? That castle is full of it from top to bottom! Believe me, that pig Berry knows how to live; he takes good care of himself and his pages.”

  For further news, Maitre de Troyes had gone with a few butchers to the great island in the Seine; now he pushed his way back inside past the men who blocked the entrance. He knew from those who shouted and stamped impatiently outside the door, what was going on in the slaughterhouse.

  “Listen!” he shouted, hoarse from the effort of trying to make himself heard. “Legoix, Caboche, listen! Berry fled from Paris tonight and the Hotel de Nesle has been assigned to the Earl of Arundel and his English!”

  The angry shouts of the comrades grew louder. They were too hungry and too poor to listen to the voice of reason.

  “So the foreigners will fill their bellies with good French food bought and paid for with our centimes!” Caboche leered at the anxious face of Thomas Legoix, who exerted great self-control to keep from assaulting the skinner with his fists. Legoix himself had no love for the English bowmen, but neither had he any stomach for a fight inside the walls of Paris on the eve of a joint action against the Armagnacs.

  “Send Caboche and all these fellows away,” Maitre de Troyes whispered sharply into Legoix’s ear. “It’s impossible to hold a meeting with the skinner here. He keeps interrupting and confusing the whole issue with his insolent mouth. Tell the men now that they must be at Saint-Jacques gate at midnight tomorrow and then let us go to your house to talk this over with the guildmasters. We don’t need all these people here. We have to get away from Caboche’s people, those loud mouths and the scarecrows too …”