The prisoner waited until the door was closed before reaching a lean arm toward the table. But she stopped short. The cardinal picked up the cup of broth and took a sip from it, and then turned toward the starving woman, whose arms were stretched toward him. “You say you haven’t eaten for two days?”
“Three, Monseigneur.”
“Why do you call me Monseigneur?”
“I heard the superior call you that—and, indeed, you must be a great noble to dare to defend me like this.”
“If you haven’t eaten for three days, you must be cautious. Take this cup, but drink the soup one spoonful at a time.”
“I’ll do whatever you tell me, Monseigneur, in this and in everything.” Eagerly, she took the cup from the cardinal’s hand and brought the first spoonful to her mouth. But her throat was so tight, her stomach so shrunken, that the broth went down painfully and with difficulty.
Gradually, however, it eased, and by the fifth or sixth spoonful, she was able to drink right from the cup. But by the time she finished it, she was so weak that a cold sweat burst from her forehead, and she was ready to faint.
The cardinal tasted the glass of wine, and then passed it to her, telling her to take only a sip.
She drank several sips. Her cheeks flushed with sudden fever, and, placing a hand to her chest, she said, “Oh, I’m drinking fire!”
“And now,” said the cardinal, “after a moment more, we will talk.” And he helped her to get up and sit in a chair near the fireplace.
No one, seeing this man gently nursing this human debris, would recognize in him the terrible prelate, the terror of the French nobility, who had struck off heads that even royalty had been unable to bend.
You may say he was a cruel man, and this show of mercy was entirely in his own interest. But to this we answer that a policy of cruelty is only necessary where it serves justice.
“I’m still hungry,” said the poor woman, looking avidly at the food on the table.
“You’ll have plenty of time to eat,” said the cardinal. “Meanwhile, I’ve kept my promise: you’re warm, you’re fed, you’ll have clothes, and you’ll be free.”
“What do you want to know?”
“How did you know Ravaillac, and where did you first meet him?”
“In Paris, at my home. I was the confidante in all matters of the king’s former mistress, Madame Henriette d’Entragues. Ravaillac had been living in Angoulême under the protection of the Duc d’Épernon. He’d been involved in two felonies: he’d spent a year in prison on a murder charge and racked up a number of debts. Though he’d been released, he was due to go back inside.”
“Have you ever heard about his visions?”
“He told me of them himself. In the first and most important, he lit a fire and, bending over it, saw a vine grow out of it and change shape, becoming the sacred trumpet of the Archangel. It formed itself to his mouth and, without his blowing into it, sounded the fanfare of holy war, while out of it a torrent of the hosts burst right and left.”
“Had he studied theology?” asked the cardinal.
“He’d confined his studies to a single question of law: when was it the duty of a Christian to kill an enemy of the pope? When he was released from prison, Monsieur d’Épernon, knowing he was a religious man who’d been visited by the spirit of the Lord—and knowing the solicitor in charge of his case—had him brought to Paris for the next phase of his trial. As he had to pass through Orléans, Monsieur d’Épernon arranged for Monsieur d’Entragues and his daughter, Henriette, to give him a letter of passage allowing him to travel to Paris and lodge in my home.”
“What was the first impression he made upon you?” the cardinal asked.
“At first I was scared of him. He was a tall man, powerfully muscled, with brown skin and a dark visage. When I saw him, I thought I beheld Judas. But after I’d opened the letter from Henriette, read that he was very devout, and saw how mildly he behaved, I had no more fear.”
“And from your home he went to Naples?”
“Yes, on behalf of the Duc d’Épernon. He lodged with a man named Hébert, the traitor Biron’s secretary. It was there that he first announced that he planned to kill the king.”
“Yes, a certain Latil told me the same thing. Do you know this Latil?”
“Oh, yes! At the time I was arrested, he was Monsieur d’Épernon’s confidential page. He must know quite a lot.”
“And what he knows, he’s told me. Continue.”
“I’m hungry,” said the Dame de Coëtman. The cardinal poured her a glass of wine and allowed her to dip some bread in it. After eating the bread and drinking the wine, she felt more composed.
“He sought you out when he returned from Naples?” the cardinal asked.
“Who? Ravaillac? Yes, and twice, on Ascension Day and Corpus Christi, he told me he—that is to say, it had been decided—was to kill the king.”
“And why do you think he took you into his confidence?”
“He said he was torn by doubts, but he was obliged to do it.”
“By what?”
“By the debt he owed Monsieur d’Épernon, who wanted the king assassinated to get the queen mother out of danger.”
“And what danger was the queen mother in?”
“The king wanted to put Concini on trial for extortion and condemn him for treason, and accuse the queen mother of adultery and send her back to Florence.”
“And given his revelations, what did you decide to do about it?”
“Ravaillac didn’t seem to realize that the queen mother was involved in the plot, so I thought about telling him all. Instead, I wrote to the king, requesting an audience, but received no response. And indeed, at that time he was completely preoccupied by his infatuation for the Princesse de Condé. So I wrote to the queen, saying that I had something important to tell her, and waited three days for an audience. But the three days passed without a response; and on the fourth, she left for Saint-Cloud.”
“Who told you of this?”
“Vautier, who was the queen’s apothecary at the time.”
“And what conclusion did you draw?”
“That Ravaillac was wrong, and that the queen mother really was involved in the plot.”
“So,then?”
“I resolved to talk to the king at any cost, so I went to the Jesuits of Rue Saint-Antoine and asked to speak to the king’s confessor.”
“And how were you received?”
“Poorly.”
“But were you able to speak to Father Coton?”
“No, Father Coton was away. I was taken to the father examiner, who told me I was imagining things. ‘What, disturb His Majesty’s confessor?’ he said. ‘On what grounds?’ ‘Because they plan to kill the king!’ I cried. ‘Bah. Tend to your own affairs,’ he said. ‘Take care,’ I said, ‘if any harm comes to the king, I’ll go straight to the judges and tell them you refused to listen.’ ‘Well, then, go tell Father Coton yourself,’ he said. ‘Where is he?’ ‘At Fontainebleau. But there’s no point in your going there, so I’ll go myself.’
“However, I didn’t trust the father examiner, so the next day I hired a carriage to take me to Fontainebleau. I was preparing to leave when I was arrested.”
“What was the name of this Jesuit examiner?”
“Father Philippe. Then, from prison, I wrote two more letters to the king, and I’m sure one of them got through.”
“And the other one?”
“The other letter I sent by way of Monsieur de Sully.”
“Who carried it?”
“Mademoiselle de Gournay.”
“I know her—an old lady who writes books?”
“Exactly. She took it to Monsieur de Sully at the Arsenal; but as the letter mentioned the names of d’Épernon and Concini and repeated the warning I gave about the queen, Monsieur de Sully didn’t dare show it to the king. However, he said if there was a real threat, he could send to have me and Mademoiselle de Gournay brought to the Lou
vre. But as the king had received so many such warnings, he just shrugged and dismissed our letter as unreliable.”
“What was the date of this letter?”
“That must have been May 10 or 11.”
“Do you think Mademoiselle de Gournay might have kept it?”
“It’s possible, but I wouldn’t know. I was in prison. One night—it was October 28, 1619, as I know because that was when I could still keep track of time—I was taken from my first prison. A bailiff came into my cell, ordered me to stand, and read me a Parliamentary decree that condemned me to spend the rest of my life bricked up in a tomb, with only a barred window for light and air, and only bread and water for nourishment. I thought it was bad enough to have been imprisoned for trying to save the king, but this new sentence almost destroyed me. On hearing it read, I fell unconscious to the floor. I was only twenty-seven years old—how many more years would I have to endure such a sentence?
“While I was unconscious, they carried me out and put me in a carriage. The breeze blowing across my face from the window brought me around. I sat between two officers, each of whom held a chain gripping one of my wrists. I was dressed in a black frock, the remnants of which I still wear. I knew I was being taken to the Convent of Repentant Daughters, but I had no idea where that was located. The carriage went through a gate that opened before it, clattered through a passage into a courtyard, and stopped at the tomb you took me from.
“They forced me into it through a hole in the wall, and one of the officers came in behind me. I was half-dead, I made no resistance. I leaned against the window. One of my wrist-chains was tied around my neck, and the other was linked to it and passed through the window to the second officer. The first officer went out, and two other men I’d glimpsed in the darkness began to work. They were two masons, and they began walling up the opening.
“Only then did I really come to myself. I uttered a terrible cry and tried to rush toward them. I was stopped by the neck chain. For a moment I thought I’d strangle myself and pulled with all my strength. The links of the chain bit into my neck, but as the chain had no noose it didn’t tighten and I just kept pulling forward. My breath gasped, my vision turned red. The officer yanked back on the chain. I fought toward the opening, but by the time I reached it the masons had already gotten it three-quarters closed. I thrust my hands through the gap, trying to pull down the stones while the mortar was still wet. One of the masons covered my hands with mortar and the other pinned them under a heavy rock. I was caught as if in a trap. I cried, I yelled. I foresaw what would happen: since no one would be able to enter my cell, if I was mortared into the wall away from the window, I’d die of hunger, hanging from my hands. I prayed for release.
“One of the masons, without saying a word, thrust a crowbar under the stone and lifted it. With a violent effort, I tore my halfcrushed hands from the wall and collapsed back beneath the window, exhausted by the double effort to try to strangle myself and to stop the masons from walling me in.
“Meanwhile, they finished their dark and fatal labor. When I came to, I was entombed. The sentence of Parliament had been carried out.
“For eight days, I was raving mad. The first four, I rolled around the floor of my tomb, howling desperately, and for those four days I ate nothing—I wanted to starve, and thought I’d have the strength to do it.
“It was the thirst that broke me. On the fifth day, my throat was on fire. I drank a few drops of water, and that was my commitment to continuing to live.
“Then for a while I thought it was all some kind of error, a mistaken sentence that would soon be overturned. Such a thing had to be impossible in the reign of King Henri’s son, under the regency of King Henri’s wife. I’d just wanted to save Henri IV; it couldn’t be that they’d want to punish me more than they’d punished his murderer, a man whose ordeal had lasted only an hour, while God knows how many hours, how many days, how many years my own ordeal would last.
“But eventually this hope, too, dwindled and died.
“Once I’d resolved to live, I asked for straw to make a bed, but the superior said I’d been sentenced to bread and water, and if Parliament had wanted me to have straw, they’d have put it in the sentence. So I was refused what we grant to our lowest animals: a mere bundle of straw.
“I’d hoped that when the harsh winter nights came, I’d die of cold. I’d heard that freezing to death was a gentle way to go. At times during that first winter, chilled to the bone by the freezing temperatures, I drifted into sleep, or rather unconsciousness. But, every time, I awoke—cold, stiff, almost paralyzed, but alive.
“I lived till the rebirth of spring. I saw the flowers reappear. I saw the trees grow green. Gentle breezes penetrated to me, and I felt my cheeks dampen with tears. I thought the winter had dried up my tears, but with spring, with life, they returned.
“It’s impossible to describe with what sweet melancholy I watched the first ray of spring sunshine slant through my window and into my tomb. I reached my arms into it. I tried to grab it and take it into my heart. Alas! It escaped me, as ephemeral as the hopes of which it seemed a symbol.
“For the first four years, and part of the fifth, I marked the passing days on the wall with a piece of stone the children had thrown at me during my madness. But when I saw winter return for a fifth time, the heart went out of me. What matter the count of days past? Better to think only of the days I had left.
“After a year of sleeping on bare stone and leaning against damp walls, my clothes began to wear thin. After two years, they tore like wet paper, and fell to pieces. I waited till my clothing was nearly gone before asking for more, but the superior said the sentence spoke of bread and water, and nothing else.
“Little by little, my clothes tore and fell apart. Winter came again. The terrible nights I’d previously endured wearing a warm woolen dress, I now suffered naked, or nearly so. I picked up the tattered rags that fell from me and tried to reattach them, but they fell like leaves in autumn, leaving me bare.
“Sometimes priests came to peer at me through my window. When I first saw them, those men of God, those angels of humanity, I begged for mercy. They laughed. More of them came after I was naked, but I gave up talking to them, and just tried to cover myself with my hands and my hair.
“I lived the simple, mechanical life of an animal. I drank; I ate; I barely even thought. I slept as much as I could for, while asleep, I couldn’t feel the pain of life.
“Three days ago, they failed to bring me my food at the usual time. I thought it was just some kind of mistake. I waited. Evening came. I was hungry, I called out. There was no answer. That night, though already suffering, I was still able to sleep. The next morning at daybreak, I was waiting at the bars of my window for my food. It didn’t come. Nuns passed by; I called to them, but they just told their rosaries and said nothing. Night came again, and I saw they planned to starve me. What a sad and weak nature is ours! Once I would have welcomed death, but now I was afraid.
“That second night I slept only an hour or two, and when I did I had terrible dreams. The pain in my stomach and belly was excruciating, and woke me whenever sleep closed my eyes. At daybreak I rose to see if they might bring food, though I knew they wouldn’t. That day was one long agony. I cried out, not for bread, but because the pain made me scream.
“Needless to say, no one responded to my cries.
“I tried to pray, over and over, but it was useless. I couldn’t find the name of God—that name that comes so easily to me now.
“Again the day grew dim, the shadows entered my tomb, darkness fell, and it was night. I was in such pain, I thought this night was my last. I could cry no more—I hadn’t the strength. I surrendered.
“Wrapped in agony, I counted each hour of the night, unable to escape a single moment of my pain. Each tolling of the bell seemed to strike in my skull and explode into millions of sparks. Finally, midnight having struck, I heard the sound of the outer gate open and close. It was an unusua
l noise at that hour, so I dragged myself to my window and peered out, hanging on the bars with both hands and clinging to the sill with my teeth. I saw a light come in the gate, enter the parlor, then come down into the courtyard and approach. For a moment I dared to hope, but when I saw the man with the superior was a monk, it was all over. I let go of the bars, pried my teeth from the sill—they seemed stuck there, as if welded to the stone—and then fell back to where you saw me.
“It was high time. Twenty-four hours later, you would have found nothing but a corpse.”
As if she’d been waiting for the Dame de Coëtman’s story to end—and, indeed, perhaps she was—upon these last words, the superior appeared in the doorway. “Monseigneur’s orders?” she asked.
“First, a question—and, as I’ve stated, you must reply truthfully.”
“I hear you, Monseigneur,” the superior replied with a bow.
“Who was it who came to you, astonished to find this poor creature still alive, though naked, fed on bread and water, and buried in a tomb?”
“Is it Monseigneur who orders me to talk?” said the superior.
“In my dual authority, both spiritual and temporal, I demand to know the name of this woman’s executioner—you others being no more than her torturers.”
“It was Messire Vautier, astrologer and doctor to the queen mother.”
“He’s the one I sent my letters to,” said the Dame de Coëtman, “though at the time he was only her apothecary.”
“Very well,” the cardinal said. “The orders of those who’ve demanded this woman’s execution shall be fulfilled.” He waved a hand toward the Dame de Coëtman. “For everyone in the world but you and me, this woman has died. That’s why you had her tomb opened tonight: to bring out her corpse. And in her grave you will bury a stone, or a log, or an actual corpse you get from a hospital—that’s entirely up to you.”
“As you command, Monseigneur.”
“Three of your nuns are in on the secret: the one who opened the gate and the two sisters who brought the food. You will explain to them what happens to those who speak when they should remain silent. After all,” and he pointed angrily at the Dame de Coëtman, “they’ve seen an example with their own eyes.”