by Robert Merle
“Permission granted. Write, Miroul.
“Madame,
Although you managed to run through my valet in Mâcon, I made you a bargain and, as promised, granted you your freedom, which you immediately used to steal my horse, valued at 500 écus, from under the nose of my other valet—”
“‘From under the nose of my secretary’,” corrected Miroul.
“If you wish.
“And today, redoubling your outrageous behaviour, you tried to have me assassinated by a fellow who, luckily for me, was too focused on the street in front of him and not enough on the stairs behind him. Which means we have him. My men wanted to kill him—”
“Monsieur, what would you think of: ‘My secretary, in his wrath, wanted to dispatch him’?”
“If you insist.
“But I did not grant him this wish, having no stomach for spilling the blood of a Christian; also, I elected not to hand him over to the provost, to whom he certainly would have given the name of his employer, who happens to be the major-domo in your household. And so I sent him back to his boats. However, Madame, I have decided to keep his horse as compensation for the horse that was stolen from me in Mâcon—”
“One bad turn deserves another!” laughed Miroul.
“‘And I am also keeping his arquebus out of love for you.’ Next line.
“I must say, Madame, that I would have found it thorny indeed to be assassinated by you on the very day I was being sent into exile. Is it not enviable to manage to be shamed from both sides at once? I would have been twice slain: first by your bullet, then by ridicule.”
“Ah Monsieur, that’s profound!”
“Next line.
“Since my talents are no longer required, I am heading off to rot in my country estate, where, I assure you, I will not eat any of the mushroom dishes that you might send my way.”
“Monsieur, what’s all this about mushrooms?”
“That’s how Annet de Commarques poisoned my cousin Geoffroy de Caumont.”
“But does she know that?”
“Geoffroy de Caumont also happens to have been her cousin.”
“Heavens! Are you a blood relative of this Fury from hell?”
“’Tis more than likely. Next line: ‘So that if I ever have the pleasure of meeting your unforgettable beauty—’”
“Unforgettable more for the knife than the beauty!” interjected Miroul.
“…may it be, I beg you, on an occasion when it will no longer be a question of daggers and arquebus, but rather one of admiration, with which I have the honour of being, dear Madame, in spite of everything, your humble and respectful servant.
“And then sign for me.”
“What, Monsieur, sign for you?”
“Sign ‘S’. Nothing more. ‘S’ followed by a full stop. Then add this postscript: ‘My mother’s maiden name was Caumont-Castelnau. Might we be cousins?’”
“Monsieur,” asked Miroul, as he traced an “S” that was pot-bellied at both ends, “what do you call a letter in which one caresses a person who has just tried to bite you?”
“A captatio benevolentiae.”§
“And just why do you wish to obtain the benevolence of this murderess?”
“So that she’ll stop wanting to kill me.”
“Is that what she wants?”
“She may end up loving me if she thinks I’ve been shamed by the king.”
“She may just pretend to love you,” corrected Miroul, “if she doesn’t believe your story of being out of favour.”
“Ah, now you’re the profound one, Miroul!” I smiled. “What else can I do? There are always two players in a game like this and it’s always dangerous. But I’d rather try to get her sword on my side than to fear it will suddenly emerge from the shadows behind me. I won’t always have an Alizon to warn me!”
“Or a Miroul,” said Miroul with pique.
“Or a Miroul,” I agreed with a grin, “who’s both a sort of a mentor to me and much, much more besides. Miroul, may I ask you to make a copy of Mérigot’s deposition with your beautiful hand, as well as a copy of this letter to La Vasselière?”
“Monsieur, what you say about my ‘beautiful hand’ is a straight-out, shameless captatio benevolentiae, since you know very well that it’s eleven o’clock, an hour when any self-respecting man should be dining. I’m starving!”
“Just one more effort, I beg you, Monsieur secretary! Moreover, I will work opposite you, since I must compose a letter to the king.”
“What? In your own hand?”
“But I’m writing to the king and so it must be in my own hand!”
“Ah, well then!” said Miroul, half in jest, half in earnest. “I’m infinitely honoured. But honour does not nourish a man!”
He must have made twenty more such bitter comments, which was his way of expressing his affection through teasing, and yet he made two beautiful copies without missing a line or a word, and that were quite legible, while I provided a brief report to Henri of all that had just transpired, adding that I’d had my letter to Marianne written and signed by Miroul, in order to keep these she-devils from forging my writing and my signature, since I’d heard that Madame Limp kept a stable of secretaries working on forgeries and copies of seals, and that they were working on a copy of the king’s own seal.
“Did you know, Miroul, that they burn the right hand of anyone who tries to copy the king’s seal?”
“With Madame Limp,” Miroul answered, “that won’t be necessary. She’s already burning internally. And the same for the queen mother. They also claim that she has already copied it more than once.”
“Ah, but that’s different. Henri refuses to allow anyone to treat his mother or his sister with disrespect, no matter how treasonous they are.”
I enclosed the three missives under a single seal and, after a brief repast, asked Miroul to carry them without delay to the Louvre.
“Monsieur, let’s be clear,” he said stiffly. “Am I your secretary? Or your messenger?”
“Right you are, Miroul,” I conceded. “Now that you’re my secretary, I’ll have to find a little valet to replace you in these menial tasks.”
“What?” scowled Miroul, his blue eye darkening. “A little valet? Here? I wouldn’t tolerate it! Monsieur I would quit your service immediately if I ever saw a little tyro in here who would inflict his ignorance on us! Monsieur, you’re not unaware of the fact that I am a man of means and can set myself up if and when I want to!”
“So, no little valet, Miroul?”
“Monsieur,” he replied solemnly and in French, “I would never tolerate it for a second, I swear it!”
“I’ll take this letter to the Louvre myself, and place it in Chicot’s hands so that he can give it to the king.”
“Monsieur, you must be joking,” said Miroul, mustering all the dignity he was capable of. “I shall go myself. Is it not natural that a secretary should carry the letters he’s just written? Could we entrust such a mission to the first good-for-nothing to come along? Would they even let him in the gates of the Louvre? And would he know how to find Chicot in such a labyrinth?”
I spent five months at the Rugged Oak, using the king’s money to raise my walls above ladder height, build a tower that would allow a view of the surrounding area and dig a tunnel that led from inside the walls to a glen in the forest of Montfort-l’Amaury, which would enable us to send a man for help if our walls were assailed by our enemies. I even purchased a small culverin that I had hoisted to the top of the tower, though I doubted it could do much damage to any besiegers, other than to strike terror into them with its explosive noise. It was also a way of sounding the alarm, as I discovered the first time we fired it, for it could be heard as far away as Méré and Galluis, and a group of the townsmen rushed to our walls to find out what was happening.
Two days after he escorted me here, Giacomi slipped away to Paris, where he was able to see Larissa at the Montcalms’ lodgings and hear her renew her promise
to try to escape the clutches of the Jesuit as soon as she was able—a proposal that aroused in me some scepticism, since I believed that Samarcas exercised more of a moral than a physical control over her, holding sway over her soul rather than her body.
Five months after having left Paris, I received a letter from Madame de La Vasselière that I found quite perplexing.
Dear Cousin,
I find it strange that you wrote to me—legitimately, I believe—of our common parentage and interests at the very moment that you accused me of having run through your valet in Mâcon, stolen your horse and attempted to assassinate you.
My cousin, this is madness! You must have been hoodwinked by some wench who had the impudence to resemble me and, perhaps, usurp my name.
As for me, I protest that my weapons are entirely feminine: I thrust with a pout, shoot with a smile and steal a horse with a glance—and, with the same glance, though a more severe one, I assassinate. However, I also know how to heal such wounds, and, strange to say, with the same arms that have caused such damage.
My cousin, if you’re not afraid of my artillery, come and see me, when you return from exile, at the Montpensiers’ mansion, where, in the delightful prospect of seeing you, I shall be your humble and devoted servant,
Jeanne de La Vasselière
I dared not show this letter to my Angelina, who would have feared for my life night and day if she’d known the truth of the matter. Moreover, she had enough worries and troubles with six beautiful children to nourish and care for, all hale and hearty, having been left as little as possible in the care of servants—who were certainly not lacking in our household, but who were always closely supervised by Angelina, since our nurses and chambermaids often entertained gross and dangerous ancient superstitions that one had to guard against, to protect the children’s eyesight, hearing and general health, if not their very lives. Indeed, the parents who rely on the false experience and claims of knowledge of such women are exposing their children to all sorts of remedies and secrets that have been handed down since time immemorial but do not stand up in the light of reason: for example, the custom of pouring a spoonful of alcoholic spirits in the nursling’s milk so that he will go to sleep straightaway at night and not bother his parents with his crying—a remedy that serves the parents’ happy repose rather than the welfare of the infant, who, rather than being fortified by such treatment, will likely be less vigorous and healthy later in life.
I named my oldest daughter Elizabeth, because I admired the bravery and energy of the English queen; the next child was also a girl, whom we named Françoise after my maternal grandmother, whom I loved dearly, though I hadn’t known her well; our third child, my oldest son, was named Philippe, since I would have wanted to bear this name myself; my second son we called Pierre, because he resembled me from the day he was born. My third son I named Olivier, since Olivier was, of all the knights of Charlemagne, the one I admired the most; my fourth son bore the name Frédéric, at Angelina’s request, simply because she liked the sound of this name and believed it portended a great destiny for him.
Dame Gertrude du Luc, for her part, had ten sons by my brother Samson, but lost two to smallpox in early childhood and was all the more devastated since she was approaching that period of life when Nature normally prevents women from bearing any more children. And, in truth, to see her in such full bloom, her face so fresh, full of colour and unwrinkled, one might doubt that Nature was so wise, or fair, to set so early a term on feminine fecundity since she extended men’s fertility to a much more advanced age—indeed, in some cases very advanced, if we are to believe the Bible.
I hadn’t seen Samson for quite some time, and when I saw him buried in his apothecary’s shop among all his vials, I found him quite thickened around the middle, his complexion very splotchy, his eyes dulled, his posterior grown heavy and his pretty face lacking the beauty it once possessed, presently all pale and swollen. And though Gertrude was always pestering him to get more exercise outside his shop, claiming he preferred sleeping with his vials to sleeping with her (a reproach quite difficult to believe given how many children he’d fathered, and the urgent appetite of the lady), I also understood that her friendly admonitions would never suffice to conquer the passion his alchemy inspired in him. So I decided to counter his pharmaceutical passion with a stronger one and, taking him aside, begged him to help in defending our stronghold against a likely attack. I suggested that, together, we patrol the woods around Montfort, take up fencing and shooting practice, and practise scaling walls, in order to help our band of Giacomi, Quéribus and Miroul ensure our common safety.
Samson was much aggrieved to hear of the peril I faced and threw himself into my Herculean travails like the beautiful angel of God that he was, so much so that his pharmacy would have been left entirely deserted had it not been for his assistant, who, to tell the truth, was quite capable of replacing him. And without Gertrude’s vigilance, the conjugal bed would have gone unoccupied, given the fatigue that my brother faced after running uphill and down dale all day long. But the cure worked miracles, for, besides keeping me good, brotherly company in the absence of Giacomi (since Larissa and Samarcas had not yet departed Paris), we rediscovered the great fraternal love that we’d shared in our infancy and youth but that had later suffered due to our very different interests and ranks, his religious zeal, his excessive naivety, his inflexible nature and, ultimately, the distance between Paris and Montfort. It was a pleasure to see him regain his vigour from our exercises and rediscover the virile symmetry of his body, as well as the former marvellous youthfulness of his face, with its freckles and those azure eyes, which were so luminous and candid that no one could gaze on them without loving him.
In her carriage filled with her eight children, Zara and herself, Gertrude came to visit us at our manor almost every afternoon, weather permitting, and this February was so mild that we could all frolic about on the grassy courtyard of my stronghold, where there was enough space for their children and mine to run and play, and for the mothers to chat about their incessant work—a conversation to which Florine and Zara could contribute their own experiences, though the latter had never wanted to marry.
“Zara,” said Gertrude, “please bring Alexandre over here, since I see he’s just gone in his pants.”
“Oh no, Madame!” exclaimed Zara throwing up her hands. “He is quite beshitten and I’m not going to touch him or even go near him, he smells so awful! It’s enough to make you sick!”
“You just have to get used to it when you’re a mother,” replied Gertrude, making a sign to one of her nursemaids to bring her the howling bundle.
“Which is why I’ll never be a mother, Madame, seeing how disgusting this business is: the terrible brutality of men, the ugliness of pregnancy, the pain of childbirth and then the infant himself, who would doubtless be very sweet, with all his smiles and looks and fresh little body, if he didn’t shit and piss himself all the time! Ah,” she continued, putting her hand over her mouth, “I nearly gag at the very thought of it, so abhorrent do I find it.”
“But Zara,” countered Angelina, who, as the wife of a physician, wanted to inject some reason into the discussion, “we must all pay our debt to nature! You yourself do so!”
“But I do not pay my debt where others can see it! And I do it as quickly as I can! And, even so, I am ashamed that these horrors and smells could emanate from my body! Heavens! I have to wash and perfume myself immediately, so disgusting do I find that business. It’s all well and good for men, who are naturally such coarse beings! But couldn’t things have been arranged differently for our sex, which is by nature so tender and delicate?”
She had hardly finished this outburst when the porter came to announce that the priest of Montfort was at the gate and requesting permission to enter. Hearing this, and desiring to honour him, I went myself to open the gate, having established a friendship with him that wasn’t conducted without feelings on both sides that were better left u
nsaid. I believed him to be a good man, not at all as zealous as one might have feared, who never attacked the king in his sermons, only providing sketchy lamentations and jeremiads about us heretics (without sabre-rattling or veiled calls for slaughter)—a degree of moderation that would have had him labelled as a “political subversive” by the Guisards in Paris.
And yet his big long nose, which was always sniffing out the affairs of his parishioners (including myself), was nettled that neither Angelina, I, our children, Miroul nor any of our servants confessed to anyone but Father Anselm. In this arrangement he smelt, with those enormous nostrils of his, an odour that, prudent man that he was, he wouldn’t have called sulphurous, but that nevertheless provoked in him a vague presentiment of evil.
“Well, Monsieur Siorac!” exclaimed Father Ameline, raising his two hands heavenwards. “What a charming and bucolic tableau this is! And how happy I am to see these fourteen lovely Siorac children, frolicking about like little angels!”
These angels were, at this moment, making enough noise to raise the dead, screaming at the top of their lungs, pummelling each other, some with their hands, others with their feet, like a bunch of devils incarnate, crying, laughing, their noses running and some even having soiled or wet themselves.
“The so-called reformed Church,” continued Father Ameline, squinting at me out of the corner of his eye, “expects its ministers to marry. But I’ve always thought that the Holy Roman and Apostolic Church displayed a truly divine wisdom in denying its priests the bother and hindrance of a large family, given the enormous expenses that are entailed, the chains by which it restricts a man’s life and, though I make no reference to present company,” he added with a sly smile, “since the ladies present are assuredly exceptions to this, the bilious moods of a spouse.
“It is true,” he continued, “that the Lord intended in some wise to correct the domestic tyranny of women by recalling them to His side almost always after the fourth or fifth birth—proof, my ladies,” he added, bowing in their direction, “that the Most High considered each of you too sweet and willing to bend to the wills of your husbands here to subject you to the common law.”