The Brethren (9 page)

The Gypsies were armed with makeshift weapons but were fearsome nonetheless, for they often attacked at night, silent as snakes, nimble as cats, quickly scaled walls thought to be unassailable, and were already within the walls by the time the alarm was sounded.

At Mespech there was now only one captain, Sauveterre, and a single soldier, Faujanet. Jonas was, to be sure, a sure shot with his longbow, but the Siorac brothers had to be taught how to shoot an arquebus. Even the women were taught soldiery, at least my mother, Cathau and Barberine were, for la Maligou, faced with the task, made such a fuss and cried so shrilly that Sauveterre sent her quickly back to her pots and pans. My mother also put up some resistance, but of another sort, claiming that it was beneath the honour of a noblewoman to touch firearms. To which a glowering Sauveterre crustily replied: “Madame, if Mespech is taken what will become of your honour then?” At this Isabelle shuddered, paled and gave in.

François was also given lessons in marksmanship. Samson and I bit our knuckles with rage, for our elder brother immediately put on unbearable airs with us. But Sauveterre found a use for us younger brothers. He had us make piles of large stones every three toises along the catwalks, and, wearing helmets much too big for our little heads, we were instructed to run back and forth along the ramparts brandishing pikes to give the impression of great numbers at the approach of the enemy. Little Hélix even got a helmet and a pick, but these were soon confiscated, so dangerous did this weapon seem in her hands. If ladders were raised against our walls, we were instructed to put aside our pikes and valiantly to hurl the stones from the battlements onto the heads of our assailants.

That autumn, the grain had been harvested and the grapes picked, and as soon as the ploughing was done, the livestock was brought in from the pastures despite the good weather, to keep them, and the cowherds, from exposure to the roving bands. We also avoided trips to Sarlat, to neighbouring chateaux or even to our villages, so wary were we of the roads where the Gypsies had become masters of the ambush.

Sauveterre ordered that a brief reconnaissance be made outside the walls at dawn each day, and after sundown each evening. He entrusted these little patrols to the Siorac twins, and, before opening the gates, had their horses’ hooves trussed with rags to muffle their approach. The twins were great hunters and we knew we could count on them for detecting the least trace of man or beast on the roads and in the surrounding woods.

From the ramparts of Mespech, we could easily spy the fortified bell tower of the church of Marcuays and, off to the right, on a more distant hill, the imposing facade of the Château de Fontenac. Overcoming his repugnance, Sauveterre wrote to Bertrand de Fontenac a courteous letter in which he proposed that our two chateaux, being so close, should each give aid if the other were attacked by the Gypsies. But the wolf cub, showing his fangs for the first time, refused this proposition flat out: Fontenac had no need of help nor wished to be obliged to give it to anyone, least of all those who had banished his father.

As for the other neighbouring castleries, Campagnac, Puymartin, Laussel and Commarques, their forces were even more impoverished than ours. Nor could we expect any help from Sarlat, deprived of its archers and royal troops: the consuls had hastily organized a town militia which was barely capable of defending its walls, being few in number and unused to battle.

Sauveterre, never one to mask the truth, especially when it was unpleasant, repeated to us every night after prayers that we must not
rely on the moat surrounding us, nor on our walls, our towers, our ramparts or our drawbridges, and that we had little hope of victory if the Gypsies attacked us. It was on hearing this that, for the first time in my young life, I began to think about death.

Mespech had withdrawn into itself as if it were midwinter, despite the beautiful autumn season, the clear October sun beginning to turn the leaves of the chestnut trees. It was a pity to think that we were sequestered in Mespech as if in a prison, the three drawbridges raised even during the day, my father and the three soldiers in danger of being killed in the war which weighed so heavily against France, and we ourselves, far from the battlefields of the north, in the greatest peril.

I was too young in 1554 to have retained any memory of the plague in Taniès other than the happy arrival of Samson, with his curly hair, his clear eyes, his strength and his exquisite manners. But ever since Ricou, the notary, had talked about the possible death of my father, and while Sauveterre, doubtless wishing to sharpen the courage of his little band, would not let a night go by without evoking the massacre that would attend the fall of Mespech, I believed we were all fated to die.

The twins, Jonas, and Faujanet took turns standing guard on the battlement walk, anxiously scanning the horizon. Thanks to our service as rock suppliers to the battlement walk, Samson and I were the only children allowed up there, a privilege we valued greatly since from there we had a marvellous view of the surrounding villages and hillsides. Breathless, our backs breaking from our labours, our hands rough from hefting the fieldstone, we would look out over the ploughed fields and the woods. As the sun set over Périgord, giving a sweet serenity to everything, the thought of death, which had so lately come to me, returned with a force it had never before had.

“Samson,” I said, “when you die, do you go to heaven?”

“God willing,” replied Samson.

“But on earth, everything continues?”

“Yes, of course,” Samson said.

“Life goes on in Taniès, Marcuays? And Mespech? And the la Feuillade woods? And the marauders’ field?”

“Yes,” announced Samson firmly. “Everything goes on just the same.”

“But we,” I stammered, a lump in my throat, “we won’t be here to see it.”

“No,” said Samson.

“But, Samson, how is that possible?” Tears streamed down my cheeks, I grabbed his hand and squeezed with all my strength.

The day after I had discovered that the earth would continue to be just as beautiful when I was no longer there, a rider bearing letters from the north for the chateaux whose lords fought for the king brought us a missive from my father. It was addressed to Jean de Sauveterre, and my mother seemed reluctant to take it when, his face beaming with joy, Sauveterre handed it to her after perusing its contents. But since he was called outside at that moment, he placed the letter on the table of the great hall and left. Seeing this, my mother approached almost in spite of herself, reached out a hesitating hand, as if both attracted and repulsed by the letter, and ended up by seizing it and retiring immediately to a window seat, at a discreet distance from Barberine and her children. She skimmed most of the letter rapidly, until she got to the end, which she read much more slowly, with sighs and tears.

Sauveterre, returning at this moment, went up to her and said quietly and with an unusual gentleness: “Well, my cousin,
you see your husband is concerned about your health and your children.”

“But the letter is not addressed to me,” replied my mother with a half-angry, half-plaintive tone, her blue eyes brimming with tears.

“That’s as it should be, since it’s a matter of wars and campaigns. But the last part proves that Jean has thoughts only for you.”

“And for you as well, Monsieur,” answered my mother with an effort at generosity evidently much appreciated by Sauveterre, for he seized her two hands in his and pressed them.

“Am I not his brother,” he said with a voice at once vibrant and veiled, “devoted to his person, his wife and his children to my dying day?”

This “to my dying day” resonated through me painfully, for I naively believed that our deaths were now literally imminent. I little realized then that people who use this expression are usually quite alive and consider their own deaths a possibility so remote that they can speak of it without anguish.

That evening after dinner and common prayer led by Sauveterre (and to which my mother and perhaps others among us felt it necessary to make secret additions in the privacy of their chambers), Sauveterre addressed us all, and particularly the children, regarding the affairs of the kingdom, and reporting the good news that my father had sent.

By his account, François de Guise had succeeded in extracting his troops from the Italian campaign, which had been but a series of errors, and had reached Saint-Germain on 6th October. Henri II had immediately named him lieutenant general of the kingdom and placed him at the head of an army, swelled by Swiss mercenaries (for the most part paid for by the burghers of Paris) and by the many nobles who had hurried there with their soldiers from all the provinces of France, which now numbered some 50,000 men eager for battle.

Guise apparently feared that all this ardour would burn itself out right there before reaching its true object. But a redoubtable adversary was beginning to undo the army of Felipe II of Spain: lack of money. “It may seem astonishing,” wrote Jean de Siorac, “that a sovereign as methodical and painstaking as Felipe II should have undertaken such a great campaign without assuring himself of the financial means to carry it out.” And yet that is exactly what was happening. Unable to pay his soldiers, Felipe’s able general, Emmanuel-Philibert de Savoie, was cashiering his army. And Guise, instead of meeting the awesome legions, which had crushed Montmorency before Saint-Quentin, encountered only absence.

The French court now remembered that we were also at war with Mary Tudor and, though they had done little to support their Spanish allies with reinforcements or subsidies, our English neighbours offered at least one major advantage over the Spanish: they were quite close at hand. For 200 years, England had occupied Calais. Jean de Siorac was careful to avoid mentioning Calais by name in his letter, and yet by certain allusions which only his brother could interpret he implied that it was to that city that Guise would direct his blow and attempt to undo the knot of this war.

At this point in his presentation, Sauveterre paused to send Faujanet to fetch Jonas, who was standing guard on the ramparts, because he wanted everyone to hear what he was about to say. Then he ordered la Maligou to light both of the pewter five-stemmed candelabra.

“Both at once?” asked la Maligou hesitantly.

“Both at once, and all the candles as well,” replied Sauveterre firmly.

This was a surprising answer, given how close a watch Sauveterre kept on expenses. La Maligou, rising to the occasion and, as always, prepared to see magic everywhere at work since the day the Gypsy had taken her by force, lit each of the candles with an air of great
pomp and mystery. Already overjoyed at the news that our father was alive, the rest of us were filled with admiration at the unheard-of luxury of such an illumination—the two candelabra reflecting their light in the polished walnut surface of the table. Sauveterre had ceremoniously seated us on either side of him, François and Isabelle on his right, myself, Samson and Catherine on his left; behind us in a second row, Cathau, Barberine and little Hélix, la Maligou carrying Little Sissy in her arms and, lastly, behind the women, the Siorac brothers, Jonas, who had just come back from his watch, his blunderbuss in his hand, and Faujanet, limping at his heels.

Sauveterre went to the armoire of the great hall and removed a long scroll, which he unrolled on the table, weighting each corner with a blunderbuss bullet that he pulled from his pockets. “This,” announced Sauveterre, his black eyes shining beneath his bushy eyebrows and his voice straining to contain an emotion we could all feel, “is the kingdom of France.”

There was a long silence, and la Maligou made the sign of the cross with a terrified air. “Sweet Jesus!” she moaned in a trembling voice. “That’s strange magic indeed that can reduce such a great kingdom to a piece of paper scarce as long as our table!”

“Fiddlesticks!” retorted Jonas. “It doesn’t fit on the paper. It’s just a picture, like the master craftsmen give me to carve my stones from. It’s a picture made all small.”

“That’s right,” said Sauveterre, “and the kingdom of France is a very great kingdom. Even changing horses every day, it would take a rider more than thirty days to gallop from Marseilles” (and here he tapped the port on the map with his index finger) “to Calais” (he indicated Calais with the flat of his hand).

“Thirty days!” gasped Barberine. “In other words a whole month! God preserve the king of France who must watch over such a vast kingdom.”

“But where is the diocese of Sarlat?” asked Isabelle de Siorac.

“Here’s Sarlat,” answered Sauveterre, who didn’t care for the term “diocese”.

“And the Dordogne?” said François to show that he was eldest.

Sauveterre followed with his index finger the sinuous line of the river.

“God keep me from his devils and his sorcerers,” breathed la Maligou. “But this Dordogne doesn’t flow.”

“Silly fool!” cried Jonas. “Do you want to feel the snow on the mountains as well? The great waters of the seas? And the winds and squalls that buffet the kingdom?” He appeared to be quite indignant about la Maligou’s superstitions and stupidities, yet all the while he was taking advantage of the crowd around the table to press up against Barberine a bit more than he should have, Sauveterre lacking eyes in the back of his head.

“What about Taniès?” one of the Siorac twins asked suddenly, though for the life of me I could not tell which one.

“Yes, where is Taniès?” repeated the brother of the other one.

“It is not marked on this map,” Sauveterre announced patiently.

“And why not?” asked one of the Sioracs, clearly offended by this omission.

“Listen, my poor friends,” broke in Faujanet, “I’ve travelled this country over during my ten years in the legion of Guyenne, and I can tell you that there are so many thousands of villages in the kingdom that they can’t all fit on this map.”

Sauveterre raised his hand: “Well said, Faujanet. I’ll simply add that Périgord is but one of the provinces of France. And Sarlat is only one among dozens of cities in France.” And he continued, “Here is Paris, the capital of the kingdom, where the king lives in his Louvre. And here to the north-west is a little sleeve of water, at its narrowest only two leagues wide, called La Manche. On the
other side of La Manche lies Dover, which belongs to England. And on this side is Calais which used to belong to the kingdom of France.”