Fortunes of France 4: League of Spies

by Robert Merle

  I woke the next morning as fresh as a young maid, but when I remembered the previous evening’s excesses I felt very ashamed to have become drunk for the first and, my God hear my solemn oath, last time in my life. But, observing about her a somewhat malicious air of triumph, I asked Alizon what had produced it and learnt that in my drunken state I’d spent the entire night taking my pleasure with her and she hers with me.

  My shame in hearing this account was so great that I sat there voiceless and stupid. I think that if I’d been a genuine papist, I would have rushed to a confessional to wash myself of this damnable sin, since I do not countenance adultery, despite the fact that, in these times, people tend to turn a blind eye to men’s sins and reserve their condemnation for women. But, since I’d remained a Huguenot in my heart, I felt that I needed to find some way to atone for this sin, which was not so much an affront to my God as one to Angelina, whose beautiful doe’s eyes and loving look were imprinted on my conscience with such force that I nearly wept.

  My poor Alizon immediately sensed the extent of my pain, and wished to console me, so sweet and affectionate as she was; however, she didn’t dare take me in her arms or even approach me, but told me that I shouldn’t punish myself so severely since, she claimed, it was all her fault, as she hadn’t remained in her room but had claimed there was a mouse there in order to enter my bed, and, once in my arms, had such a great desire for me that it was too great a temptation to simply play at being husband and wife without ending up making love. She also assured me that everything that I’d done was done to serve the king and that, consequently, I should be less hard on myself, and that I should realize that the wine I’d drunk had stripped me of any will or knowledge of what I was doing.

  “Ah, Alizon,” I replied, “you are so kind and benevolent to want to comfort me. But anyone can see that I willingly blindfolded myself in order not to see where this voyage with you would eventually lead us, under the guise of serving my king. With all our disguises! And the roles of husband and wife, and the drunkenness! I was fooling myself the whole time! Hiding from myself the desire I’d had from the very beginning!”

  “Ah, Pierre,” cried Alizon, in utter joy, “I knew it! You wanted this too! Even though you pretended to be so strict and virtuous, Huguenot that you are!”

  And suddenly she burst out laughing.

  “But listen, my Pierre!” she continued, throwing herself in my arms, cooing as I held her to me. “Don’t you owe me some of your life for having saved you—not once but twice? And don’t you feel some friendly obligation to accommodate my affection for you—at least as long as we must play this charade on this voyage that you have arranged? Can’t I at least be your wife on the outskirts and margins of your life? I swear that our roles here will end the minute we reach the gates of Paris!”

  This was well said, and heartfelt, and clever, since some confessors wouldn’t have gainsaid it, arguing that sinning one time or ten is all the same. Once the wine bottle is opened, the sinner might as well drink it. Another sophism, I fear, by which I hoped to soothe my suffering conscience—which, by the way, seemed to trouble me less once I’d assured it that I would close the “parenthesis” of my relationship with Alizon as soon as I reached the gates of Paris and that my fidelity to my wife would return once I’d done so.

  Some time after the events I’ve just described, I alluded to them in the company of my immutable friend Pierre de L’Étoile, who, his curiosity piqued, asked to hear my account. In response, he made a comment that gave me pause, since his recollection of the events suggested that the years that had passed since these events had somewhat clouded my memory: it was his belief that this battle had occurred several months after the dates at which I’d situated it. We checked in his journal to see if he’d given an account of the events in Boulogne. We found no entry at the dates I’d recollected, but instead discovered the battle against the League had occurred on 20th March 1587. His account of this incident concerned not only the events at Boulogne but the sad fate that later befell Captain Le Pierre, who had so loyally defended his king.

  I have copied this page, my heart stricken by the cowardly assassination of this unfortunate man:

  At this time, the Duc d’Aumale ordered the assassination of Captain Le Pierre, a very brave soldier, for having prevented the taking of Boulogne, an operation the Duc d’Aumale and the League had planned. The king was very upset by this but dissimulated his role in the matter and pretended to believe what Aumale and the League told him, namely, that it was merely a quarrel they had, even though His Majesty had been informed of the contrary. His Majesty also ordered the Duc d’Épernon, who was most unhappy about this situation and ready to start a fight with Aumale, not to pursue the matter, but to wait for the moment when they could teach all of these Leaguers a lesson.

  Dear reader, if this outcome strikes you as unjust, I ask you to accommodate, as best your heart can, this awful truth: this story is not a fable in which the wicked are punished and the good recompensed. Regarding Boulogne, it’s quite the opposite, for the outcome there displayed the extremes of iniquity: the provost Vétus, traitor to his king, whom Captain Le Pierre had imprisoned in Boulogne, was freed four and a half months later as part of an exchange of prisoners that the king and the Duc de Guise arranged, following the Treaty of Nemours, by which the king pretended to be reconciled with his powerful vassal and, at least in appearance, gave him everything he asked. Upon his release from prison, Vétus had the extreme impudence to return to Paris. I learnt of this, and asked Nicolas Poulain what had become of him; Poulain, stroking his bushy moustache with his right hand, said with a sly smile:

  “He was welcomed and treated very well by the members of the Holy League, who ordered me to introduce him to the best houses.”

  “They asked you, Mosca, the very man who had denounced him to the king?!”

  “Yes, precisely! Which I found quite amusing,” smiled Mosca, revealing his yellow teeth. “Together we visited the best houses of the League, where Vétus was welcomed, well considered and well feted, so that it took us a week to do all of these glorious visits.”

  I was more inclined to weep at this than to laugh at it as Mosca (or Leo, or Poulain) did—this man of two or three faces, who had neither faith nor soul, thinking only of money and his advancement, and who was quite comfortable having a foot in both camps, assured—as he thought himself to be—that he would be well treated by the future victor, whoever that might be. What honest man, however, would not have been devastated, seeing the terrible fate that met Le Pierre and the glory of the provost Vétus, to realize that in these troubled times everything ended up perverted or subverted, the king’s loyal subject brought low and the disloyal one raised in stature?

  On my return to Paris, I shed my skin of bonnet merchant at Alizon’s place and, putting on my regular clothes and strapping on my sword, I felt myself once again become a gentleman, both inside and out. As Alizon watched me undress and then dress, she observed, with more bitterness than humour, a tear in her eye:

  “You’ve already put on your fine airs again! You haven’t even left my house and you’re already the courtier, dreaming only of forgetting all my lessons and, worse, all the pleasant times we had on this journey!”

  As she said this, a tear flowed down her cheek, and, moved by this, I took her in my arms, held her to me and kissed her pretty face, assuring her that I would always be her friend and that I would visit her from time to time, always conscious that she had twice saved my life, and was as fond of her as she was of me.

  “Oh, no!” she cried. “That’s just not true! And never was! But it’s sweet of you to say so, and sweeter for me to hear it. But,” she asked between sobs, “will we never return to Boulogne?”

  I didn’t know what to say in answer, nor what to do, other than to shower her face with kisses, and couldn’t help feeling that she’d been an irreplaceable piece of my life.

  When I returned to our lodgings, I learnt from Miroul tha
t Angelina had gone out to visit my sister Catherine. Miroul himself seemed to greet me icily, clearly upset that I hadn’t taken him along on the journey to Boulogne, since I’d thought that the Guisard spies might have recognized him, however well disguised he might be, by his varicoloured eyes. I ran to embrace my beautiful children, and then asked my chambermaids where I might find Fogacer. They informed me that he was with Silvio and Giacomi in my cabinet on the ground floor. I went back down and was delighted to find them deep in discussion. After I embraced each one in turn, Fogacer asked with his sinuous smile whether I was happy with my trip and if I had brought back good news for the king. I had to content myself with a simple “yes” but couldn’t elaborate, since I didn’t know whether His Majesty had confided in him.

  “Well, mi fili!” he gushed. “This will give our Henri new confidence and faith, since, ever since you left, the Louvre has been inundated with messengers arriving from all parts of the kingdom bringing news of cities falling to the League without a fight, because they’ve been either bought or outwitted, or defeated by other shameful means. Our poor king has been watching his kingdom crumble before his very eyes! Guise lit the fuse by seizing Châlon-sur-Marne, which he’s made a gathering place for his army. After this, he took Toul and Verdun. His brother Mayenne has captured Dijon, Mâcon and Auxonne. Monsieur de La Châtre, to avenge himself on Épernon, who removed him from the captaincy of Loches, has handed Bourges over to the League. Guise’s relatives and accomplices, Elbeuf, Aumale and Mercœur, have created an uprising in Normandy, Picardy and Brittany. D’Entragues has taken Orléans.”

  “Is that all?” I asked, terrified.

  “The south, thank God, has held out. The League’s efforts failed in Marseilles and the Leaguers were arrested and hanged. Toulouse and Bordeaux stand firm under the king’s officers. In the east, Guise didn’t dare attack Metz, where Épernon has stationed his troops. Troyes was taken, but has now been retaken.”

  “So all is not lost!” I cried, beginning to regain some hope.

  “Well now, mi fili,” replied Fogacer, arching his diabolical eyebrows, “I see you have lost nothing of your cheerful disposition!”

  “I cannot believe,” I said, “that God would permit the victory of these miscreants!”

  “Deus non est, neque diabolus,”** corrected Fogacer, his dark eyes sparkling.

  “Ah, my venerable doctor!” cried Giacomi, in terror for his friend. “I beg you by the Blessed Virgin not to speak in this way!”

  “And what did you say, Monsieur?” asked Silvio, who invariably addressed Fogacer with utmost respect and politeness, despite, or perhaps because of, the familiarity of their connection.

  “Nothing that bears repeating,” replied Fogacer, who doubtless did not wish to share his atheist views with Silvio for fear of persuading him and putting him in as much danger of being burnt alive as he himself was. “Which is why,” he added with a smile, “I said it in Latin, the language of these filthy pedants who go croaking around the Sorbonne.”

  “Fogacer,” I observed, not without some asperity, which I tempered with a smile, “your Latin croaking would not have pleased Angelina, who has made you swear never to say ipsissima verba†† in this house!”

  “Oh, my Pierre!” cried Fogacer, who blushed in a most naive and disarming way, a reaction that suddenly seemed to spread over his entire face, which caused it to lose the sharpness of its features, its devilish smile and the ironic twist of his mouth, and to resemble instead the face of a child. “I beg you, don’t repeat it to her! She’d scold me, or, worse still, refuse to speak to me for an entire day!”

  I promised, laughing; and, begging their pardon for remaining so briefly among them, I prepared to leave, and saw my Miroul emerge from the little cabinet, sword by his side, cap on his head, requesting permission to accompany me. I hurried to Quéribus’s lodgings, where my Angelina gave a cry of

  happiness at seeing me and covered my face with a barrage of kisses that I returned with passion, feeling myself to be both the happiest of men and the most traitorous Judas Iscariot who’d ever crawled on the face of the earth. I realize that this kind of feeling is hardly in fashion in Paris or at the court. But, however courtly Alizon chides me with being, I am only a courtier in appearance, remaining in my heart both a provincial and a Huguenot.

  However, I had to pull myself away, and thanking Quéribus warmly for the escort he had provided me, made haste to see the king and bring him the happy news of the League’s failure to take Boulogne. But Quéribus, observing that I couldn’t possibly appear before the king as sweaty and dirty as I was, since His Majesty had such a delicate sense of smell, had a bath prepared for me, where his three chambermaids scrubbed me, dried me and combed my hair. This done, Quéribus brought me one of his most sumptuous doublets and some colourfully waxed shoes, and told me that if I refused to wear them he would never speak to me again, explaining that the clothes were matched with the news I was bringing to the king.

  “Hey, my brother! How do you know that it’s good news?”

  “By your resplendent face!”

  I laughed at this, but said not a word more of it, handing him my purse and asking him to give five écus to each member of his escort with the message that they were to tell no one of their adventures, where they had been or what they had seen.

  “Not even me, my brother?” laughed Quéribus.

  “Not even you,” I said, embracing him, “unless the king unseals my lips!”

  I found the king had aged, his face ashen and swollen, his eyes sunken, his back bent, and his right hand inserted in his doublet and supporting his belly, which led me to believe that the burning in his stomach had returned, and that once again he was unwisely eating too much. This last was confirmed by the sight of a bright-red comfit box hanging from his belt, containing hard candies and prunes that he nibbled on alternately, believing that since the first blocked him up, the second would prevent constipation.

  Although the weather had been quite clement, he’d had a huge fire lit in his hearth, and, still feeling chilled, was wearing a black velvet hat that he’d brought back from Warsaw, which came down to his ears and would have made him resemble Louis XI had his face not been so painted with red and white—make-up that looked very out of place with his unshaven beard (a spectacle so unusual that my eyes bulged at it), and even more so with his two pendants, one of pearls and the other of diamonds, which hung from his ears and were so heavy that they elongated his lobes. As for his habitus corporis,‡‡ I would have been a thousand times happier to see him, as I usually did, standing erect in front of the fireplace, his beautiful hand on the mantel and his face of marble, than to see him feverishly pacing back and forth in the room, now rubbing his belly, now pressing his two hands to his temples (indicating that his headaches had also begun to recur), rings around his large, black, haggard eyes, which constantly shifted about as though suspicious of his surroundings, and his bitter lips mumbling so softly that it was impossible to catch a word of what he said.

  At first he didn’t see me, so enveloped was he in his bitter thoughts, but when Du Halde drew his attention to me, he paused and extended his hand, which, after having kissed it, I held in mine, intending to take his pulse, but he angrily withdrew it and said curtly:

  “I am not ill.”

  “Except, sire, for your head and stomach.”

  “And how do you propose to cure me, Monsieur,” he snarled, “when Marc Miron cannot?”

  “Sire,” I replied, “I have no other cure for worry than to give some opium to the patient so that he may sleep, and to ask him to open the windows, take a walk outside in the fresh air, eat less and throw away the prunes that Your Majesty has been devouring to excess.”

  “That’s doctors for you!” came the king’s retort along with a dismissive shrug. “They take away our little pleasures and want us to be grateful! Well, you wicked physician, now that the League is taking everything else, you want to take away my comfit box as well?�
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  “Sire,” I laughed, “one gift deserves another! Give me your comfit box and I’ll give you back Boulogne!”

  “What!” he cried. “Boulogne! My comfit box is yours!”

  “Yes, indeed, sire! The League failed miserably in its attempt to take the city! The city and the port are still in your hands!”

  “Ah, my good doctor!” cried the king, his eyes shining; and, pulling himself up to his full height, he cried, “You have secured peace in Picardy!”

  “Sire,” I replied, “you give me too much credit! All I did was to warn them in time of the attack. Captain Le Pierre was the one who defeated them.”

  “Siorac, my son!” replied Henri, extending his hand. “What a beautiful blow you have struck against Guise! Chicot! Du Halde! Did you hear?” he said, spinning around with surprising alacrity, and in his joy extending his two hands, which the pair rushed to kiss. “Siorac, my son,” he added, his eyes shining, “are you laughing? You have every reason to laugh. My gay doctor, what gay news you bring!” he cried, and, suddenly casting off his velvet hat with childlike petulance, he said, “Siorac, come over here and sit next to me! Here on this stool! On my right! Tell me everything and in the tiniest detail! Give me an earful of good news! My ears haven’t been accustomed to such good news for a long time!”