by Robert Merle
“The king,” Quéribus concluded, “wants you to take refuge at the Rugged Oak and stay away from the dangers that surround you in Paris, until the war has ended.”
“Well,” I confessed, “how it saddens me to hear that! What is he saying? That I wouldn’t even be safe in his encampment at Gien-sur-Loire surrounded by his troops?”
“He thinks not.”
“What about my mission?”
“He begs you to share the fruits of your discussion with me and I will speak for you.”
“Not such fruitful fruits! Bouillon wants what the king wants, but he cannot manage it. The strength of the German army is in its size. Its weakness resides in the fact that it’s composed of reiters, Huguenots and Swiss, who do not get along with each other, and are commanded by two generals who don’t trust each other: Bouillon, whom Dhona considers a child with no experience, and Dhona, whom Bouillon considers an idiot. Moreover, the poor Bouillon is devoured by consumption, which will soon kill him.”
“Those are pretty meagre fruits all right,” observed Quéribus, “given how much money this three-headed army has cost three kings.”
“Three?” I said. “How do you calculate that there are three of them?”
“Navarre, Elizabeth…”
“And the third?”
“Henri.”
“What?” I gasped. “Henri?”
“Secretly, through Bouillon. At least, that’s what they’re saying at court.”
“You mean among the League?”
“No, no! Among the most faithful officers of the king. Oh, my brother! If this is true, it’s way too deep for me! To pay someone to invade your country!”
“Not at all, my Quarreller!” I smiled. “To invade Lorraine, devastate it and vanquish Guise!”
“Well!” said Quéribus taking his head in his hands. “Machiavelli! Machiavelli! Machiavelli! Did you know that Navarre has also asked Bouillon to go to Lorraine? He only wants the reiters to create a diversion, not to try to join forces with him, since he doesn’t want to owe his eventual victory to a foreign army or to confront Henri in his encampment at Gien-sur-Loire. Apparently, Henri keeps saying, ‘I’m using my enemies to take revenge on my enemies!’ The king says this in Latin.”
“In Latin it goes like this,” I said, parading my knowledge of that language: “‘de inimicis meis vindicabo inimicos meos.’”
“Ah, Pierre, how knowledgeable you are! How I regret, when I hear you speak Latin, that I never studied anything but military arts when I was younger!”
“And you’re the finest blade in the kingdom, and at more than thirty years of age you still you cut a figure that turns a lot of heads…”
“This is true,” conceded Quéribus, prancing a bit to display his wasp-like figure. But it sounds like you yourself made some conquests in London…”
“Silliness and nonsense! I was wasting my time! I merely flattered a flower who had no interest in being picked, or even admired.”
My Quarreller was not unhappy to hear this: having conceded my abilities in science, eloquence and politics, he didn’t want to vie with me to be the most seductive member of the family.
“Ah, if only I could have come with you to London, I could have been your second!”
“No, you would have been the leader of the expedition! For I have no doubt that as soon as you arrived you would have said, like Caesar, ‘Veni, vidi, vici! ’”
“And that means?” he said, raising an eyebrow that was, like the king’s, plucked and painted.
“I came, I saw, I conquered.”
“Excellent!” cried Quéribus, delighted and amused. “Most excellent! Oh heavens! What a proud motto! Pierre, you must write it down for me in Latin so that I can memorize it and use it on occasion! Better yet, I’ll have it embroidered in gold on my hose so that I can always have it in mind when I’m undressing!”
It was not without some sadness that I watched him ride off the next day on a pretty bay mare with his escort, heading for the king’s encampment at Gien-sur-Loire, envying the wild insouciance of this worldly-wise favourite of the court, as if that were not a contradiction in terms. At least, whatever his coquettish frivolities, Quéribus was faithful to his king. Not that he understood where His Majesty wanted to lead him, but he followed nonetheless as a point of gentleman’s honour, however perilous this fidelity might be, since the League had sworn to bring about the deaths of all the supporters of Henri and the ruin of their houses once victory had been declared.
All that autumn, I champed at the bit in my little estate—not that there wasn’t a lot to keep me occupied there, finishing the fortifications on the model of what we’d done at Mespech, and managing my estate according to good Huguenot economy. I’d been able to enlarge my domain over the years, thanks to the largesse of my master. And it must be said that I would never be one to feel the time drag even in the middle of a desert, being a man who enjoys the charms of his household and marriage. Angelina, my beautiful children, my books, my rides through the forest of Montfort-l’Amaury and the evenings spent in front of the fire with neighbours, men of lesser nobility, richer in rustic virtues than in money. And yet I languished so far from my master’s service, for this work had become the very stuff of my life, since, in serving the king, I was persuaded that I was also serving the conservation of the state, the maintenance of peace and the victory of tolerance.
Heavens! How many times in my forced rustic inactivity did I dream about and relive, though without ever satisfying this thirst, my many memories of comic or dangerous events on my missions in Guyenne, in Boulogne, in London and in Sedan! It seemed to me that I was fully alive at those moments, and the more so the more dangerous and useful I was, serving as a weaver’s shuttle in the hands of His Majesty, going and coming, returning again, according to the orders Henri gave me, but always at the centre of the warp and weft of the enormous tapestry he wove to defend his throne against those who sought to overthrow him and trample the people under the scourge of war, massacres and the Inquisition.
I often invited the priest Ameline to Montfort, who was a good enough fellow, prudent, not more invested in the League than was necessary for his well-being, never preaching against the king—and only rarely against the arch-favourites—and moderate in his habits, his behaviour and his body. He was neither tall nor short, neither thin nor fat, neither hairy nor bald, neither young nor old, neither puny nor hale, neither wanton nor entirely chaste, neither too fond of the bottle nor rejecting of it, neither stingy nor liberal, neither gluttonous nor abstinent, neither a dolt nor a wit, neither eloquent nor stuttering, neither wise nor foolish, neither cowardly nor brave, neither a zealous worker nor a lazy one—and whatever he said, or suggested, or condemned, it was never entirely fish or fowl.
Of his face, one couldn’t quite say whether it was round, oval or square (or a bit of each); whether his look was frank or false; which his nose was, thin or obscene; whether his teeth were good or bad, since he never showed them when he smiled; or whether his voice was strong or weak, since he opened his mouth so little to let it out.
“Well, Monsieur chevalier,” he said, sitting down at my table on the chilly 16th November that remains today so vivid in my memory, after greeting me neither coldly nor warmly in response to my welcome, “I had Monsieur the abbot of Barthes visit me yesterday, who comes by fairly often, since he has some land at Mesnuls. He is, as I believe I’ve mentioned to you, the confessor of Chancellor de Villequier, and since he was coming from Paris, he brought me news of the war that we’re waging.”
“And what is the news?”
“Neither good nor bad,” answered the priest.
I knew he would say that, I swear! And seeing him sitting there silently chewing on his ham, I waited until he’d finished to say:
“Please tell me about it!”
“For the moment, here’s how it stands,” said Ameline. “The army of Monseigneur the Duc de Joyeuse was entirely broken and defeated at Coutras by the kin
g of Navarre on the twentieth of October, and a large number of Catholic noblemen were killed. Monsieur de Joyeuse himself was thrown from his horse, upon which he brandished his gauntlet and cried, ‘Ten thousand écus to spare my life!’ but had his head shattered by a pistol shot fired by the fellow who was the sole survivor of the massacre that the duc had ordered at La Motte Saint-Eloi.”
“The trouble with massacres,” I noted, “other than their inhumanity, is that they always leave behind a witness or an avenger, but that’s a lesson you never get to profit from since that lone survivor will end up killing you.”
That was all I could think of to say, since I didn’t want to rejoice at Navarre’s victory or pretend to be disappointed by it.
“The strangest part of the business,” continued Ameline, “is that once Navarre had won the battle, he disbanded his army and disappeared. It was even rumoured that he’d died. But I don’t believe it. If he’d been killed, they would have paraded his body around urbi et orbi. So he’s still alive.”
“So what’s the good news?” I asked, fearing the worst.
“The great foreign army, which people said would remain in Lorraine, has spread out over the kingdom, one leader pulling to the left and the other pulling to the right in total confusion, and ultimately it was surprised at Vimory and defeated by the Duc de Guise, who killed 2,000 of them.”
“So where did the other 20,000 go?”
“I don’t know,” replied Ameline, who seemed momentarily surprised that I didn’t rejoice at this victory as he had expected.
But seeing this, I quickly added with some gravity:
“In my opinion, the good and the bad are sometimes counterbalanced. We must wait to see how things play out with Navarre on the one hand, and the remaining presence of the reiters on the other, to see whether there’s any reason for celebration.”
“Well,” Amine corrected, “there’s already a reason! The Duc de Guise’s victory is being greeted everywhere with great joy! In Paris there are fireworks; stories of the victory are being printed and proclaimed at every street corner, and the standards seized from the reiters are on display. In every church a Te Deum is being sung, and outside public prayers and Ave Marias.”
“Ah,” I thought to myself, “the League is very busy, indeed! I’ll bet the Duchesse de Montpensier is busily buying streamers to attach to all the standards taken from the enemy—and she’s got an infinite litany of praise for Guise issuing from every pulpit of the city!”
I had some difficulty hiding my teeth-gnashing from Ameline, and instead feigned moderation, which he could easily identify with, since he never bragged and, by nature, avoided all extremes. And in the end, fearing that he should remember my indifference later, I slipped him a few écus, knowing that he was engaging in redoing the roof of his vicarage, having now finished the one for the sacristy.
I’d known Anne de Joyeuse back in Montpellier, when he was scarcely five years old and was certainly the cutest little fellow in creation, his pink cheeks, blue eyes and golden hair looking angelic, and his manners so sweet, so open and so affectionate that you couldn’t look at him without delight. His father, the Vicomte de Joyeuse, was governor of Montpellier; I’d first seen him at breakfast, eating with one of those little forks—an unheard-of refinement at the time—that looked like a tiny pitchfork, whose use was later introduced by Henri III at court, causing a great scandal among his pious courtiers, and which was later dubbed a fourchette.
Anne, whose image remains so indelibly fixed in such vivid colours in my memory, was just tall enough to see what was on the table where his father was seated. He wore a pale-blue cap and a large flattened collar. He seemed to me to be lively, mischievous and funny, but a well-behaved lad, who kept looking lovingly from his father to his father’s plate, on which he was cutting his meat, and each time Anne saw a morsel he liked, he’d point with his little finger and say in bird-like, sing-song tones:
“May I, Monsieur my father?”
And Monsieur de Joyeuse, smiling, would answer with great civility:
“You may, Anne.”
Later, I saw Anne quite often, since I’d had my friend Espoumel carve a set of little wooden soldiers, some with French, some with English uniforms, and place them in the miniature fortifications that we’d made for Anne’s birthday, and re-enacted for him the siege of Calais—which I knew well, since my father had fought heroically in that battle alongside the father of the current Duc de Guise. And, passing him the stick by which he could move the soldiers about in the construction, advancing into or retreating from the breaks in the walls that our cannon had made, I sadly watched him repeat over and over the same mistakes, using up his reserves too quickly, failing to protect his rear and pushing too far ahead with his avant-garde.
I had the occasion to encounter him again at court, when, at eighteen years old, he conquered the affections of the king. He was, at that age, so amazingly good-looking that one of our poets could have compared him to a flower without anyone smiling at it. But sadly, the person most amazed by this beauty was Anne himself, being so enamoured of himself, so drunk with his own charm, that he lost all reason and abandoned himself to every caprice, including constantly changing his moods.
All of these defects—which so exasperated the king that occasionally he went as far as to beat his arch-favourite—made up the essence of his charm, which, like that of some children, was composed of his inaccessibility, his lack of conscience and his thoughtlessness.
He gave proofs of this instability that astonished even the most phlegmatic of his friends. Showered by Henri with favours, titles, lands, chateaux and an immense fortune, and married off to a princess well above his own rank, he consorted with the Duc de Guise and became a member of the League, in hopes of maintaining and increasing these exorbitant privileges once Henri had died. After which, he felt exceedingly unhappy when the king lost interest in him and his younger brother, the Comte du Bouchage, and locked himself away in a monastery so as not to have to choose between the king and him.
Poor little Joyeuse was so empty-headed that he thought he could betray Henri without losing his love, massacre unarmed prisoners at the battle of La Motte Saint-Eloi and continue to be admired as a humane leader, and have this massacre celebrated in the sermons in the capital while retaining the esteem of the king, who hated both massacres and the sermons!
He was called the “arch-favourite” but he should have been called the “arch-spoilt child”, for his insane lack of discipline caused him to lose the first important battle he ever fought; and when, on the battlefield, he shouted, “Ten thousand écus to spare my life!” his cry had no other result than to attract a pistol bullet that was not so light as his brain, and represented a judgement that exacting vengeance for the massacre of La Motte Saint-Eloi was worth more than an heavy pile of écus.
In memory of the child he was, I felt some regret at the death of this young man, but shed not a tear, since tears were inappropriate, given his treason and his cruelties, whatever the lack of responsibility and thoughtlessness that led him to commit them. Fructu non foliis arborem aestima.*
Around 1st December, I was strolling through the woods of Montfort-l’Amaury with Miroul and three of my domestics, all of us well armed, when, approaching the pond that lies along the right-hand side of the road called “Great Master’s Road”, I heard some cries. Believing that it must be some travellers under attack by highwaymen, I galloped furiously towards the lake, followed by my company, and there saw some woodcutters in a small boat trying to pull a wench from the water, who, far from making their task easy, was vigorously resisting their efforts and screaming at the top of her lungs that she wanted to die and that neither God nor the Blessed Virgin could prevent her from doing so. Luckily, she was screaming in Provençal, a language not comprehensible in the Île-de-France, so that the woodsmen didn’t understand, or they might have been horrified by her blasphemies and just let her drown. Unhitching another boat, Miroul and I jumped in a
nd rowed over to this desperate stranger, who seemed to be unable either to pursue or to abandon her enterprise, since her saviours were keeping her afloat with their oars, yet couldn’t persuade her to grab on to their boat. But since we came up from behind her without her seeing us, while she continued her impious and strident invective, I was able to seize her by her chin and, with Miroul’s help, pull her aboard despite her nearly capsizing us with her desperate defence. Finally, having laid her out on the bottom of our craft and with my full weight preventing her from escaping (though this was far from pleasant since she was soaked with icy water), I seized both her hands in one of mine to prevent her from scratching my face, and, as she began to quieten down a bit, with my other hand brushing her long, wet hair away from her features, I succeeded finally in uncovering her face and recognized… Zara.
“Ah, Zara!” I exclaimed.
I said no more until we had her up behind me on my horse, and Miroul tied us together with a rope, after having given a few coins to these woodsmen, who doffed their hats to us and offered us “10,000 million thanks”, just as Queen Elizabeth would say, as they left. Not only had they doubtless earned more in these few minutes on the water than in an entire week splitting logs, they had also walked away with a thrilling story that would be retold every night until Christmas!
I could just as well have not tied up Zara, since she had now calmed down and was shivering from head to toe, gripping me with all her strength and whispering to me not to gallop since she was terrified of falling—that she was falling! that she was dying of fear! I looked back at her and assured her that it was better to die from fear than from drowning, especially in December. Now, with her charming lisp, she told me she could see that I had turned against her, conniving with everyone else to reject her, to point fingers at her, and I could only surmise from all this that she was regaining the will to live, since she was protesting so vigorously. Then, having said all that, she suddenly gave me a wet kiss on the back of my neck and hugged me tight, adding, without any fear of contradiction, that I was the only one—the only one!—for ten leagues around to show her any tenderness or consideration.