by Robert Merle
His feast devoured, the Italian was sleeping like a log, his elbows flat on the table and his cheek on his elbows, with the air of blessed felicity that you see on the faces of the chosen in stained-glass windows in papist churches. I tapped him on the shoulder.
“Ah, Monsieur doctor!” he stammered, blinking in the candlelight like a bat in the sun. “You’ve done wonders for me by filling my stomach! I dreamt I was in heaven!”
“Giacomi,” I replied gravely, but not with a frown, “so what are you? A pickpocket? A hired assassin?”
“Not a bit of it, Monthieur doctor!” he replied, raising his head and speaking with his Italian lisp. “I was, as I said, a master-at-arms in Genoa and well respected for my talents. But having killed in an honourable dual a gentleman who had provoked me, I had to flee my country to save my skin. And so hurriedly, that I left without any money.”
I looked him over. He had a very curious face: it was oval, quite thin, with well-tanned skin, or rather dark-brown, and features that communicated irrepressible joy—the edges of his eyelids, the corners of his lips and his nose, which bent oddly heavenward. His jet-black eyes protruded from their sockets, revealing lots of white, and were constantly moving this way and that, like little ferrets, but absent of any malice or trickery. He was tall and thin, with long arms and legs and something so quick in his movements that he reminded me of a bird. From his frank and open face, I decided that he must be telling the truth. Moreover, he seemed well enough educated and not without book-learning, and spoke French reasonably correctly.
“But Giacomi,” I ventured, “can’t you have money sent from Genoa?”
“Alas, no! When I left, the hussy I was living with ran off with my purse, my jewellery and my furniture. Ah, Monsieur doctor, I was left, as you see me here, with nothing to my name. But I’m not going to dwell on it. Nessun maggior dolore che ricordarsi del tempo felice nella miseria.”§
I was delighted to hear him quote Dante, whom I ranked above all the poets of his time, and whether ’twas the configuration of his features that give him a naturally happy face or whether he carried within him an inexhaustible source of gaiety, he looked joyous even when quoting these sad verses.
“So, not a sol to your name?”
“Not one!”
“And where will you sleep tonight?”
“Same as last night: under a buttress at the church of Saint-Firmin, with one eye open, and dagger in hand, since this town is crawling with hooligans who wouldn’t think twice about dispatching a fellow just to steal his worn-out doublet.”
This set me to thinking and finally I said, “Giacomi, how would you like to sleep in Miroul’s room tonight? He’s a good companion.”
“Ah, Monsieur doctor!” he cried, raising his arms heavenward, a gesture that reminded me of Fogacer (who, I’d heard, was now living in Paris, having fled his native city, as I had, but for very different reasons).
“Well, do you want to?”
“Yes, of course!” replied Giacomi, but not without a trace of reticence, which I couldn’t help but notice. “Better a roof than the cold sky, and better an honest servant than a robber.”
At this point, with a quick knock on the door, Miroul entered, bearing my arms. In response, Giacomi stood up with a most gracious smile and asked, less in the manner of a servant than in that of an écuyer, if I’d give him permission to inspect my sword. I agreed, unsheathed it and handed to him. Taking it in his long hands, which seemed very nervous and delicate, and, it seemed, quite clean—proof that he’d asked our hostess to allow him to wash them before his repast—he held it up to his wrinkled nose as if to smell it, his protruding black eye scrutinizing the length of steel. After which he placed the blade on his left index finger about three inches from the hilt and balanced it so that it tipped neither towards the hilt nor towards the point.
“Monsieur doctor,” he now asked, “may I test its flexion?”
Upon my assent, he held the point up to the wooden door and, his arm flexed, thrust forward, while bending his knee, and the blade bent into a perfect semicircle so that the point was no more than a foot or so from the hilt. After which Giacomi relaxed his arm and the blade immediately straightened, without the least trace of the flexion it had undergone. But, as yet unsatisfied, Giacomi pulled from his boot a small key, with which he tapped little blows on the blade every inch or so of its length while holding his ear to the steel to listen to the sound, as if he were tuning the strings of a viol.
This done, he pronounced with a pompous air—but still with the lisp which seemed to rob his words of their seriousness: “Monthieur doctor, I observe, first of all, that your blade is not flat like some vulgar battle sword made for slashing but not for thrusting. It’s triangular, and thins gradually from hilt to point. I see no black stains: so there are no weaknesses in the metal that might cause it to break. As the point is slightly broken, I can see that the interior of the blade is grey and not white, thank God. Moreover, when I flexed it, the blade did not bend at the point but along its entire length in a perfect semicircle, and, as soon as I relaxed the pressure, it regained its original straightness vibrantly, an obvious sign that it was properly dipped, which was confirmed when I tapped it with my key. Lastly, the sword is beautifully balanced from the pommel to the point, which means it’s light in the hand and will be prompt to strike, as long as its wielder’s brain is. In short, Monsieur, it’s my judgement that you have here a good friend and one who, as it’s not a woman, will not betray you. La donna è mobile qual piuma al vento,¶ but this friend here is faithful and shines with a solid and irrefragable virtue.”
“Ah, Giacomi,” I laughed, “don’t you think it’s true than men are also mobile qual piuma al vento? You’re still licking your wounds from your wench in Genoa! Ab una non disce omnes.”||
As I said this, I thought of my Angelina, who’d been waiting five years without ever wavering in her resolution, as steadfast in her great love as a storm-battered rock. “Oh, Angelina,” I thought, “as soon as Samson has been liberated from his flesh trap, I will joyfully throw at your feet the ornaments of my new title, by whose virtue I shall be able to enrich myself enough to marry you!”
“Monsieur doctor, are you listening?” said Giacomi. Emerging from my trance, I watched as he lined the sword up, point downward, next to my leg. “Aha! Just as I thought! It should have been a good inch longer since there is an ideal proportion between the length of the sword and the height of the swordsman—a rule that your sword-maker must not have known, however good an artisan he was.”
“An inch!” I countered. “Who cares about an inch?”
“Ah, Monsieur doctor,” corrected Giacomi, “there are times when an inch can make all the difference between life and death.” And though he spoke of death, his face appeared happy and full of mirth. But perhaps it was only his upturned nose that gave me this impression.
While Giacomi, his gentle lisp echoing my brother Samson’s, continued to hold forth in melodious French in his precise and elegant manner, accompanied by very gracious gestures—though one could sense, beneath this offhandedness, reserves of strength—Miroul, who understood the language of the north passably well, was listening open-mouthed to the Italian. Seeing which, Giacomi turned to him and said with great gentility:
“Compagno, I see that you wear you sword on your right hip. I surmise, then, that you’re left-handed.”
“That I am.”
“Eccellente!” replied Giacomi. “Eccellentissimo! È tutto a tuo vantaggio.** And what’s even better, you have eyes that don’t match, a sign of great agility and skill.”
“I hold my sword in my left hand,” replied Miroul, delighted to be thus praised, “but throw my dagger with my right.”
“And where do you hide your short sword, compagno?”
“In my boot leg.”
“Just one?”
“Just one.”
“Seeing as you have two legs, you must have two short swords,” smiled Giacom
i, and the corners of his mouth were lifted towards his enormous ears so contagiously that Miroul and I couldn’t help mirroring his joyful mien.
Our hostess interrupted Giacomi’s lessons to bring Miroul a torch and tossed a few unenthusiastic civilities my way before she headed off to bed to fill her head with visions of the day’s takings, like a pregnant woman her fruit.
I’m not sure the Three Kings is still there in Montpellier, but, at the time, it faced the tower of the same name that rises between the Lattes gate and the Babote tower. This last is a round, fairly wide structure facing south-west that overlooks, both to the right and to the left, the city wall. From the Three Kings, it wasn’t more than a fifteen-minute walk to the place des Cévennes, where I lodged with Maître Sanche, the famous apothecary. But at night we had to take some precautions on this route.
Miroul, unsheathed sword in his left hand, held a torch aloft in the other and walked three paces in front of us to light our way. But Giacomi suggested that, since Miroul was left-handed, he should walk on my left to protect me, so I did as the Italian suggested, and Giacomi walked on my right, sword in hand. It was a moonless night and not a sound could be heard around us except our footsteps, which we muffled as much as possible to enable us to hear as we walked along the left facade of Notre-Dame des Tables—or rather what’s left of it after the damage our side stupidly wreaked on it after we took the city from the papists during the troubles a few years previously. Once past Notre-Dame, we left the rue de la Mazellerie du Porc, which is straight and fairly wide, and headed down the rue de la Caussalerie, which is a narrow, winding alley that opens on the place des Cévennes, where I lodged. But scarcely had we entered this street before Giacomi whispered:
“Monsieur doctor, we’re about to be attacked. I can feel it in a little muscle in the palm of my right hand. If it happens, we three need to fight back to back so we can all protect each other. And, Monsieur doctor, may I borrow one of your pistols?”
I gave it to him without saying a word, and he stuck it in his belt, and with his left hand drew an impressively long dagger from his boot. I drew mine as well and rolled my cape around the arm that held it, my heart beating wildly, and even though a moment before I was ready to drop from fatigue, I now felt as light and sprightly as a hare.
“Monsieur,” hissed Miroul on my left, “I think I hear something brushing the walls of the nearest houses.”
“Hm,” I said, “I think we’re going to have to fight it out. I can sense it too.”
The next ten steps we took were on cat’s paws, our feet scarcely touching the paving stones, our legs tensed and our ears straining for the tiniest sound. Despite the fact that the dancing light of the torch lit the way ahead, we still couldn’t see a living soul.
“Back to back, Monsieur doctor!” whispered Giacomi.
The rue de la Caussalerie and the rue de l’Herberie (so named because all the hay the city needed for its 20,000 horses was stored there) were not at right angles to each other, and it was in this turning that the attack was launched.
“Kill! Kill!” cried a loud voice, ripping through the silence of the night, and suddenly a cloud of derelicts, bursting from the darkness like so many rats from a sewer, engulfed us, weapons in their fists and emitting strange howls, without any thought of the nightwatchmen, believing they’d overrun us in a trice before the gendarmes could arrive.
We closed ranks, back to back, or rather thigh to thigh since there were three of us, and, without a word, or even a cry for help since we knew that no inhabitant of the city would dare open his door to shelter us, we put cold steel on these ragamuffins, whose most potent weapon might have been their stench, which nearly had us fainting from nausea. At their first rush, Giacomi dropped two of them at his feet by doing nothing more than extending his arm with an unbelievable quickness, while with his dagger parried the blows they threw at him. But the storm was now buffeting me and all I could see were sword points threatening me, although I was less concerned by these than by a long pike that was aimed at my chest but still too far away for me to deflect it. However, having dropped two or three of these brigands in their tracks, I had the time to slip my dagger between my teeth, seize my pistol and fire it at the pikeman. His weapon fell into the street and, returning my pistol to my belt, I grabbed it with my left hand and used it to keep at bay the attackers on my left, whom I could not reach with my sword. I couldn’t see what Miroul was doing while I was so occupied, but when the first assault fell back, I saw two bodies lying before him in the street, proof that his labours had not been in vain.
Although our attackers did not launch another attack, neither did they withdraw, but took counsel among themselves in a strange dialect I couldn’t make out. Certainly the wounded and dying that lay around us must have given them pause, especially as it was now more difficult to have at us since those they had lost now served as a rampart that protected us!
“Monsieur doctor,” hissed Giacomi, “forget the pike, it’s just getting in your way. Recharge your pistol. It’ll serve you well when these ruffians come back to bite us.”
I did as he bade me, but while I did, I wanted to make contact with these rascals, which, lacking other advantages, would at least gain us some time.
“You there!” I cried in the street slang of Montpellier. “Wouldn’t it be better to come to terms? What would you rather have, my purse or the blood of my heart?”
“Since we saw you treat all your friends to a feast at the Three Kings, we’d prefer the former,” yelled a large, muscular brigand who wore a black patch over one eye, “but now we want your blood as well! You’ve killed too many of our honest comrades!”
“No, no, my good fellows,” I cried, “it wasn’t malice! We’ve got a right to defend ourselves! So how many of you are going to die on the street before I spill my guts for you? Don’t you think it’d be better that I give you my wallet in exchange for free passage?”
“Not on your life!” cried the man with the patch. “We’ll get the money anyway when we kill you! I want you three bled dry like chickens on a spit! My honour demands it!”
“Giacomi!” I whispered. “Did you hear that? Is honour a gold ring in the snout of a pig?”
“Well, we’ll make him understand that it’s not!” cried Giacomi with a little laugh.
Scarcely had he spoken before, with a shout of “Kill, ’sblood! Kill!” the brigands hurled themselves on us again but without the fire or bravado they’d shown the first time, some of them stumbling on their own dead that surrounded us, and their weapons meeting the points of our swords at every thrust. And yet, as they advanced in more orderly fashion, they endured fewer losses, and I realized that, following the orders of their one-eyed leader, they were now just trying to wear us down—a tactic that would likely succeed if the nightwatchmen didn’t arrive. But I knew, as everyone in Montpellier did, that unless Cossolat’s guards backed them up, the watch would be in no hurry to help us, being more fearful of the brigands than the brigands were of them, since their soldiers were neither young, skilled in arms nor particularly valiant.
“Giacomi,” I whispered, “I don’t see their ‘honourable’ leader. Do you!”
“No, Monsieur doctor,” said the Italian, who, even in the teeth of death, remained suavely polite. “He’s way over there, giving commands, but he’s not attacking. His honour forbids it.”
“I see him!” said Miroul.
“Is he within range of your knife?”
“Yes!”
“Give me your torch to free up your right hand,” I said, placing my dagger between my teeth and reaching towards him with my left hand.
This movement almost cost me dearly, a sword tip glancing off my forearm, which would have pierced right through had I not been covering it with my cape, which was fastened by a copper pin and which the blade glanced off, as I determined the next morning, leaving only a scratch that I hadn’t even felt.
I seized the torch and held it aloft, truly amazed that Miro
ul could fight so well in such an awkward posture, and feeling badly exposed myself with my dagger in my left hand. I kept my eyes glued on the sword tips that threatened my chest like so many mortal wasp stings, so I saw only out of the corner of my eye the gesture Miroul made of seizing his knife from his boot and throwing it. But I definitely heard, over the strident clashing of swords, the grunt of the one-eyed man as the knife lodged in his chest, and then the shouts of the rabble: “Old dead-eye’s croaked!”
And at this we sensed a hesitation among our assailants that we quickly took advantage of, having at them with our good blades a good deal more effectively than they ever would have wished. Some of the rascals fled the engagement, melting back into the shadows whence they’d emerged, while others, as if enraged, redoubled their attack, shouting vengeance and death, and so savage was their impetuosity that this time we laid out a good half-dozen of them on the cold ground before their bellicose fire was extinguished.
In the calm that followed, Miroul reclaimed his torch and Giacomi whispered, “Monsieur doctor, are your lodgings far from here?”
“Forty paces.”
“And you’ve got the key?”
“I have it.”
“Monsieur doctor, throw them a handful of écus and couronnes! We’ll run for our lives. Dagger in mouth. Sword and pistol at the ready.”
Oh reader, you can imagine how hard it was for a Huguenot heart like mine to toss a handful of coins to the winds! How it hurt to hear the tintinnabulation of these coins sown on the paving stones with no hope of any harvest! So, as the beggars threw themselves on the coins as they rolled here and there, we set off at a run, bounding like madmen, and met no more than four of them in our path, two of whom we shot like pigeons at a fair, the other two immediately ceding us the right of passage.