by Robert Merle
“And who will occupy the barony of Fontenac for these twenty years of banishment?” asked Siorac.
“The baron’s only son, Bertrand de Fontenac, who has just turned fifteen and is now of age.” And La Boétie added after a moment’s reflection: “Now you are rid of the old wolf, my friends, but there’s still the cub. I have heard little good concerning this fellow, and since he’s young, he may yet grow sharp teeth.”
2
I WAS BORN on 28th March 1551, six years after the acquisition of Mespech by the Brethren, when its appearance had already considerably changed. Actually the captains made few changes in the chateau itself: it was a huge rectangular construction of two stories built around an interior courtyard and flanked at each corner by towers with machicolations, and these were joined by a crenellated battlement walk.
When they bought it, however, the chateau was surrounded only by an embryonic moat, scarcely a toise wide and so shallow that a small person, if thrown in, could easily regain his footing. Obviously, this was a ridiculous defence. Such a moat rendered the drawbridge leading to the chateau’s fortified south gate totally superfluous. Any attacker could have easily waded across the moat and thrown up a ladder against the ramparts, anchoring it in the mud at the foot of the wall.
The technology and inventiveness that the captains dedicated to their modifications of these moats could not have succeeded without one lucky circumstance: the well dug in a corner of the interior courtyard at Mespech turned out to be inexhaustible. The Brethren discovered this when, a short time after the sale, they set about emptying the well to purify it. In the middle of August, during a severe drought, they began work in pairs with buckets, but since the water level remained constant, and the well’s circumference permitted it, the work crew expanded to three, to four, then five… At eight men strong, the level began to recede somewhat, and they redoubled their efforts. Ultimately the level was lowered enough to reveal a split in the bedrock the size of a fist, through which water gushed in a steady stream. The captains sounded a retreat before this friendly assault and the water quickly rose to its usual level and gushed into the conduit which empties into the moat.
Before beginning work on the moat, they would have to deviate this overflow and this work would have to wait until after harvest time, given the large numbers of men needed to dig the excavations required by the captains’ plans. In addition to our own soldiers, servants and neighbours, day labourers were hired and fed, the Brethren sparing no expense to accomplish their grand project. Their idea was to dig a veritable pond a toise deep and seven wide around the entire circumference of Mespech. And thus, Mespech became an island, linked to the continent by a scheme so ingenious, so beautiful and so well defended that I’ve never seen a visitor to our manor who wasn’t deeply impressed by it.
Indeed, the drawbridge and fortified gate do not connect to the land, but instead to a small tower several toises shorter than the castle gate. This little tower is surrounded by water and itself connects, by means of a second drawbridge, to an island five toises square. This island, surrounded by a high wall, pierced by loopholes, is made up of outbuildings, including a shed for ploughs, ricks, harrows and other cumbersome farm machinery, as well as a wash house built on the side facing Mespech. Another tower at the far end of this island, where the moat narrows, houses a third drawbridge, this one giving access to “terra firma”, as we now call it.
The narrowness of these three protected passageways eliminates two-way traffic and slows the movement of our wagons when we are harvesting, haying or bringing in the animals. At night, everything must be brought within the courtyard of Mespech for protection—except of course the heavy machinery, which would be too cumbersome a nightly task and which is therefore stored on the island. But the extent and depth of the water surrounding us and the three drawbridges which separate us from the land all produce a very comforting sense of security which somehow contributes to the beauty of the place.
For a long time I believed this disposition, as pleasing to the eye as it was useful for defence, to be unique in France. But once when I was much older and was racing through hill and dale, hotly pursued by a band of savage, murderous Moors intent on taking my purse, my horse and my life, I caught sight of a chateau which greatly resembled Mespech in the layout of its moats and of the small towers which commanded its defence. I hardly had time to visit this place, however, given the band of twenty brigands on my heels. Though my valiant black steed delivered me from that fateful encounter, I was never able to retrace my path to this attractive dwelling whose resemblance to Mespech set my heart pounding, as if it weren’t beating hard enough already from the danger I’d confronted. All I can say is that it’s somewhere in the Bordeaux region, not far from the city itself.
On the far side of the moat, close to hand and easy to irrigate, we laid out the kitchen gardens and our fruit orchards, and, a little farther down the hill, so that they wouldn’t spoil the view, our walnut trees. These last we planted plentifully, hoping to extract enough oil for our own use and for sale. The entire area, woods and gardens we enclosed with a high stockade of sharpened and fire-hardened chestnut stakes. We also laid out below the palisade rows of caltrops to catch any marauders who might attempt to steal our fruits and vegetables by night. Alas, the poverty of our poor Périgord region is now so acute, and so great the number of homeless driven by hunger out of the mountains of the Auvergne, that not a summer passes without finding some poor beggar in our orchards, barefoot and bleeding, mouth agape and fists clenched in pain, doggedly limping towards our gardens, knowing full well that feudal law condemns him to be hanged if caught.
My mother used to weep over these hangings, but the Brethren pointed out that, given the extreme weakness and hunger of these poor fellows, their trap wound would never heal, and that to allow them to wander off limping and bleeding merely condemned them to the agonies of a prolonged death. My mother finally got them to agree to knock these poor devils senseless before hanging them and not to leave their bodies to rot on the gallows as was the custom.
Since her intervention, we have given a decent burial to an entire cemetery full of these tramps in a rocky corner of our land where not even dandelions would grow. My mother used to go there the first Sunday of every month to pray for their souls, escorted by Barberine, the wet nurse who carried me in her arms, little Hélix, her inseparable daughter, and Cabusse, fully armed, since neither spouse nor children were allowed outside the walls of Mespech without escort. Later on, when these rules were relaxed, I used to play with Hélix in the marauders’ field. These poor souls, who went so hungry throughout life, provided rich nourishment to our fields after their death. For now the grass there grows green, and in springtime the field is buried under a profusion of bright yellow daffodils which no one dares pick. It is said in these parts that when one of these flowers is picked it utters a baleful moan and that whoever picks it is condemned to a life of hunger.
One year after the purchase of Mespech, my father married Isabelle de Caumont, whose blue eyes, blonde hair and medallion had made such a lively impression on him when he and Sauveterre had visited Castelnau for the first time. At fifteen, Isabelle was in the flower of her youth, “tall in stature, with firm and sumptuous breasts, long legs and small feet”. My father composed this description on the first page of his Book of Reason, begun on his marriage day, 16th September 1546. He noted as well that he was thirty-two years old, his wife but fifteen, that she was of sweet temperament, healthy in body, very pleasing company, of a gay and even disposition (although strong-minded at times), and a good Christian, despite her penchant for idolatry. “The wedding, bridal clothes, gifts to the clergy, donations to the poor and the two dinners,” I read subsequently, “cost 500 livres, a modest sum,” my father concludes, “considering the noble customs of the day.” To which Sauveterre, in his tiny spidery handwriting, added in the margin, “Still too much. Five hundred livres is the price of a handsome piece of work.”
&nb
sp; Not that the Brethren, on this occasion, were divided. Since he was now too old to marry, Jean de Sauveterre was content that Jean de Siorac should continue his line, so that at least one branch of the Brethren should take root, flourish and bear heirs to whom Mespech could be willed. But Isabelle’s medallion disturbed him somewhat, as well as the sudden intrusion of so many women into Mespech. For Isabelle brought with her not only her chambermaid Cathau, but also, a year later, the wet nurse Barberine, with little Hélix, whom she nursed along with my mother’s first child, my elder brother, François de Siorac.
Though very economical with the Brethren’s wealth and most desirous of increasing it, Sauveterre could hardly complain that Isabelle came empty-handed to Mespech. For, besides her connections to the Périgord nobility, she brought 2,000 écus, a beautiful forest of hardwood, a field large enough to graze two or three cattle along the road to Ayzies, and, just three leagues beyond it, an excellent and accessible sandstone quarry.
The Brethren always turned everything to good use, selling off surplus grain, hay, wool, honey, walnut oil, pork or horseflesh, and thus hoped to make a good profit from this quarry at a time when many burghers were starting to build chateaux outside the towns, as much for show as for convenience.
On the Sunday following the wedding, the captains had the town crier in Sarlat announce with great fanfare that any stonemason living in the town or its environs should present himself to the captains on the next Sunday before the church. But, the very next day, a bearded fellow appeared at our outer drawbridge, as tall in stature as he was broad of shoulder. His heavy linen shirt, tied at the waist, revealed a chest thickly matted with black hair and his sandals were laced to ankles and knees with leather thongs. He was heavily laden, wearing slung across his back an English longbow, and at his belt a large bowl, an impressive cutlass and a quiver full of arrows. In addition, a large wooden box was slung on a strap over his right shoulder. His large feet, bare except for the sandals, were covered with dust, but his head was covered by a pointed felt hat which he doffed the minute the captains appeared in the tower window above the drawbridge.
“Messieurs,” he cried, “I am the stonecutter you’re looking for. My name is Jonas.”
“But you are to meet us in front of the church at Sarlat next Sunday,” replied Sauveterre. “Couldn’t you wait?”
“I could wait well enough!” cried Jonas. “It’s my body that needs bread.”
“What are you doing with an English longbow?”
“I hunt with it when townships and barons give me leave to do so.”
“You wouldn’t be a bit of a poacher, now, would you?”
“Surely not!” protested Jonas. “That’s a capital crime! Never would I do such a thing! I’ve only got one throat and that’s to drink with, to eat with and to breathe God’s air with.”
Siorac burst out laughing: “And what is this great box you carry on your back?”
With a dip of his shoulder, Jonas eased the chest to the ground and opened it. “My stonecutter’s tools.”
Standing, dark-skinned, black of beard, his large hands trembling slightly at the end of his brawny arms, he waited, gazing fixedly at the captains.
“Where are you from, Jonas?” asked Sauveterre, and, because the captain had addressed him by name, Jonas threw him a grateful look.
“From the mountains of Auvergne. My village is called Marcolès. The quarry I worked is all used up.”
“Jonas,” said Siorac, “are you a good marksman with that bow?”
“At your service, my good captains.”
“Can you hit that crow who’s just occupied the top of our walnut tree?”
Turning in search of the insolent crow, Jonas tested the air and replied, “’Tis as good as done, if the wind’s not against me!” Seizing his weapon, he fit an arrow, steadied himself, bent the bow until the string touched the point of his nose and the tip of his chin, and, without seeming to aim, let fly his shaft. The arrow whistled through the air and the crow, pierced through, dropped through the branches with a great flutter of wings and leaves.
“Well done!” cried Siorac.
“The English,” Sauveterre noted, “still maintain their companies of archers. Perhaps they’re right. Jean, we’ve seen more than one battle lost because the rain has dampened the fuses of the arquebuses. So, my good Jonas,” he continued, turning to this worthy, “are you as good a stonecutter as you are an archer?”
“Indeed so!” replied Jonas with pride. “I know my trade as well as any man alive, and I take pleasure in it. I can not only cut stone from the quarry, I know how to split it into roofing tiles. I can shape blocks for your walls and can round them for your towers. I can set a straight lintel in the ground for a door or a window; I can build you a semicircular arch or set a triple arch with every stone at the correct angle and drop in the keystone perfectly. I can construct transom windows or double-columned ones with capitals. And if I have to climb a ladder and place and mortar a stone as heavy as I am, I can do that too.”
“Can you read and write?”
“Alas, no, but I can count, number stones and understand a design if it’s got only figures on it. I can use a ruler, a compass, a plumb line and a square.”
The two captains exchanged glances. “Jonas,” announced Sauveterre, “we’ll try you out for three months, with food and lodging. At the end of three months, if we hire you, you’ll get two sols a day plus bed and board.”
Those were honest enough conditions for the time, but thirty years later, with the cost of living considerably augmented—and the price of cut stone as well—Jonas still earned his two sols a day, with no hope of exhausting his quarry before it exhausted him, and yet professed himself happy enough, as he put it, to use his two large arms to nourish his large body, when there were so many in the region who had no work.
“Messieurs,” rejoined Jonas, “before I came to you, I went to see your quarry. If the woods and the field above belong to you, I would like permission to hunt there. I’ll give you three quarters of everything I bag, keeping one quarter for myself, which will save you that much salt beef which you would have given me for my board. Also, if you give me a she-goat for the field, I’ll raise kids for you in return for the milk she’ll provide me.”
“We’ll consider it,” answered Sauveterre.
“In the quarry,” continued Jonas, “I discovered a very deep cave. If you’d be so good as to furnish me a mattress of chestnut leaves, I’ll live there summer and winter, so as not to lose time walking back and forth that would be better spent in my work. Anyway, who would guard my cut stone if I don’t live where I work?”
Thus did Jonas give account of himself on the day he arrived, and so he is still today: more worried about his masters’ interests than his own, having entered Mespech the way others enter a monastery. Not that our stonecutter was without a taste for life, or didn’t enjoy a bottle at our Sunday table, a game or a story by the evening fire—nor was he unresponsive when a sorceress came to tempt him in his cave—but that is a story for another time.
My mother was five months pregnant with my elder brother when La Boétie returned from the capital, on 21st April 1547, with all manner of stories concerning the death of François I. Our police lieutenant had gone up to Paris with a large escort in order to solicit the king’s favour regarding some matter of great importance to him, but which my father neglected to explain in the Book of Reason, although he wrote down everything else there: meetings, conversations, as well as the prices of things. I read there, for example, that on the preceding Saturday, my father journeyed to Sarlat to buy a hundred pins for my mother (five sols), shoes for Cabusse (five sols, two deniers) and shoes for his pony (two sols), and that he enjoyed “an excellent repast” at the Auberge de la Rigaudie for eight sols.
I quote this entry because it contrasts so dramatically with what follows. La Boétie found a great to-do at the court, sad faces and hopeful ones mingling together—the former all too obvious,
the latter hypocritically disguised—none, however, sincere, except for the real suffering of the dauphin and the despair of Madame d’Étampes, the king’s favourite, who was already packing her bags. As for the king himself, whom La Boétie only glimpsed from afar, he seemed much changed, his face thinned greatly, his body bent and his movements agonizingly slowed.
“Monsieur de La Boétie,” said Siorac, “allow me to interrupt you. My brother is laid up in his room, in some distress from an old leg wound. Would you be willing to continue this narrative in his tower chambers? He would be greatly chagrined to have missed your story.”
The east tower to which Siorac referred is reached by a winding staircase set in a smaller adjoining tower. Our chapel occupies the ground floor of this tower, Sauveterre’s rooms the first. The room adjoining his bedroom is a small study, where our uncle spends much of his time; the chimney draws well and the window looks out onto the courtyard so that Sauveterre can keep an eye on the comings and goings of our servants. “’Tis nothing serious, Lieutenant,” grimaced Sauveterre to his guest, unable to rise to greet him, “my leg cramps up once or twice a month and all will be well tomorrow.”
“So I will hope with all my heart,” answered La Boétie, settling himself with a groan. “My own posterior is sore enough from all the riding I have just done, which has brought me naught but vexation. I had scarcely arrived at court when the king decided to move. Despite his deplorable health, he seems unable to stay in one place. You’d think he felt death stealing about him, given his haste to flee from one chateau to the next: from Saint-Germain to la Muette, from la Muette to Villepreux-lès-Clayes, then on to Dampierre, to Limours, to Rochefort-en-Yvelines… All I could do was follow him about, unable to approach him, paying good money for my escort’s lodgings to all the rascally innkeepers of the royal territories who charge two sols a day just for hay for the horses! What’s more, they mock my guards’ speech, which is as good as any man of theirs.”