Against the wall, I spied the short swords that we were allowed to bear only outside the walls of Mespech. My heart leapt on seeing them. I unsheathed mine and practised wild blows to the right and to the left, cutting to pieces the plague and its terrible hired assassins, which evoked howls of laughter from Samson, though not at my expense, for mockery was completely unknown to his pure soul. After a good laugh with him, I blew out the lamp and fell asleep like a sack, without the least apprehension, but full of pride to be accompanying my father in such a hazardous journey and excited by the prospect of seeing and learning new things which bore on my future estate.
My father woke us at daybreak the next morning, bringing us each a bowl of warm milk with his own hands, along with a well-buttered piece of fresh wheat bread and a thick slice of salt pork.
He urged us to eat up, and while we sat on our beds on opposite sides of the room, heartily working our jaws, my father put his foot on the stool and said with great seriousness: “Pierre, and you too Samson, you must know that God never does anything that is not good and right, and thus has His secret reasons for sending us the plague. Yet, God acts only through natural agents, and against these agents it is meet and right to defend ourselves, either by taking precautions against them or by fighting them when they come.”
He stood up straight, hands on hips, and continued in a clipped and clear voice: “You should know, my sons, that the plague’s contagion reaches man through corrupted air which surrounds the infected person, his bed linen, his furniture, his house and the streets he has passed through. Some doctors claim that this pestiferous air enters us through a putrid vapour. Others, that there are tiny venomous creatures, so small that the eye cannot see them, and which penetrate our mouths, noses, ears and the pores of our skin, laying eggs in our blood and spoiling it. This is why it is important, first of all to eat well…”
“Why so?” I asked, my mouth full and astonished that what I took to be a pleasure was actually a remedy.
“Because the noble parts of the body, to which the venom attaches itself, can only defend themselves if they are fortified. For if the veins and arteries are not filled with new food, they can be more easily entered by the venom, which, finding empty space, gets a hold of the noble body parts, principally the heart, the chest and the genitals. Secondly… But you’ve finished eating. Stand up quickly, Pierre, and take off your shirt.”
Which I did, not a little surprised. My father took from the ground a large saucepan of vinegar he’d brought and, dipping his finger in it, rubbed it on my temples, armpits, chest, groin and genitals. “This,” he explained, “will preserve your body from infection.”
“How?” I asked.
“Vinegar…” he began, going over to rub some on Samson in his corner. “But what a strong, well-built lad this is! It’s a marvel to see how well put together he is at his age!” He stopped short and, turning his head quickly, shot me a piercing look as if he were afraid he’d offended me with this praise of my brother. But in truth I’d not given it a thought, so fascinated was I by his talk, my eyes and ears riveted on him.
“Vinegar, you were saying, father?” I reminded.
“Ah yes! Vinegar, you should know, is cold and dry in its essence. Now cold and dry are qualities wholly repugnant to putrefaction. Which is why we preserve herbs and onions in vinegar, which is consequently opposed to venom and keeps the body from corruption.”
This said, my father came back over to me and strung a sachet around my neck, which he rubbed on my chest. He did the same for Samson.
“This sachet contains an aromatic powder which will preserve your heart. Get dressed, Pierre, and you too, Samson. It’s time to be going.”
When he saw we were dressed, he took two little sacks from his pocket, gave me the first and Samson the second. “This you must hang from your belts. They’re cloves, a very costly herb which you must chew constantly while in Sarlat and other infected places. As you chew, the strong and healthy odour of the cloves will fill all the empty cavities of your mouth and nose and so the pestiferous vapours cannot find any place to gain a foothold in you and will be repulsed into the air outside your body.”
I watched and listened to my father in a kind of beatific admiration of his immense knowledge, dumbfounded to learn in so short a time so many secrets about contagion. But, in fact, he had been speaking to me every day about this for the last week, and it was amazing how much I already knew.
“And finally, my knights errant,” said Jean de Siorac, “here are your helmets: a little gauze mask, dipped in vinegar, which each of you will wear over your nose and mouth once outside Mespech. Well then, my rascals,” he continued, coming to a halt in front of us with his hands on his hips, “you are now armed for warfare against the plague! So let’s be on our way. May God guide us! And may the Lord protect us! In your saddlebags you will each find two loaded pistols, which will aid you but little against the plague but will protect you, peradventure, from the evils of men.”
In the courtyard of Mespech, our servants had gathered, their eyes wide, all standing still as statues, to watch us take our leave as if they would never see us again except wrapped in shrouds and lowered into the grave. Sauveterre, doing his crab walk down the stairs from his tower, came to embrace my father with great feeling, and whispered in his ear with a husky voice, divided between anguish and fury, “This is madness! Madness! Madness!” And my father, perhaps attempting to cover these words, said in a very loud voice that when we returned Escorgol was to sound the warning bell, and that no one should approach us. At our arrival, great fires should be kindled in all the fireplaces, and vats of water set to boil in sufficient quantity for us to bathe and wash our clothes. Outside the walls, in front of the gatehouse, the Siorac brothers were waiting for us, already aboard the wagon loaded with the side of beef, both quite pale and their lips trembling. My father, turning slightly and raising his eyes, made a parting gesture with his gloved hand to Escorgol, at his watch behind the arrow loop above, watching us go with tears in his eyes, a detail that troubled me deeply, though no more so than the silent adieu of our servants in the courtyard. So it was that I began to have a better idea of the perils we were throwing ourselves into.
The cart set off with a lurch, and my father, urging his dapple-grey gelding up beside the dray horses, silently contemplated for a while the Siorac twins’ anguish. “My cousins,” he said, “I worry about you, seeing you so prey to your imaginations, which hold such sway over us. You’re trembling! You believe you’re already dead! But you must realize that, beset with apprehension or fear, the blood recedes from the heart, leaving it empty and allowing the contagious venom to gain easy entry. And so those who are afraid of dying actually make great strides towards death.”
“It’s not so much death I fear,” said one of the twins (and when he named Michel, we knew it was Benoît), “but that Michel might die and I survive him.”
“I’m troubled by the same thought,” echoed Michel.
“Well, then, you may rest easy,” counselled my father. “You are twins and your humours are so alike that the contagion will not strike one without striking the other. And so you will die together, or you will survive together, but you won’t be separated.”
“Lord be praised!” exclaimed Benoît with a sigh of relief. “My noble cousin, you have taken a great load off my heart.”
“Mine too,” echoed Michel.
From this minute on, the colour returned to their cheeks, their faces regained their composure and they made no more complaints save about having, as we all did, to wear gloves and masks in such stifling heat. It’s true, that in addition to their gloves and masks, they were armed with chain mail and helmets, which didn’t help their comfort, sweat streaming down their faces, even though it was still early in the day and the sun was scarcely risen. Each had a blunderbuss resting on his knees, the cannon turned to the outside of the path.
Two leagues from Sarlat, at a place called les Presses, we caught s
ight below us on the road, as it wound down the hill to the right, the body of a naked man, stretched out, his legs spread, on the parched yellow grass of the field. He was about a dozen toises below us and though the wind was at our backs, the stench he exuded was overpowering. “My cousins,” said my father, “go on without stopping. You, too, Samson. Wait for us at the bottom of the hill.” Benoît whipped the dray horses, and they set off at a gallop, followed by Samson on his white horse. My black jennet and the big dapple-grey gelding, wanting to join them, put up a struggle when we tried to bring them to a halt, but after a few whinnies, turns and wheels, they calmed down and stood quietly, their legs trembling slightly on the hillside above the corpse.
“Pierre,” said my father. “This unfortunate bears all the signs of the plague I’ve described to you. Can you name them?”
“Yes, of course,” I answered, my throat knotted and almost failing, so terrible a blow did the odour and view of this hideous cadaver strike in my heart. “This large abscess stretching the skin under his right armpit is a bubo. The black pustules on his stomach are gangrene. And the multicoloured blisters on his chest—reds, blues and violets—are called purpura.”
“Very good,” my father commended, pretending not to notice my unease. “Also notice that the skin is yellowed and soft, and livid in colour, the eyelids are black and the face contracted.” And he added: “‘Whoever dies, dies in pain,’ said Villon, ‘but a plague victim more than anyone.’”
“How does that man come to be lying here,” I asked, “and not in his bed?”
“The sickness begins with a burning fever, a great faintness of heart, a swelling of the abdomen, a terrible nausea and a constant and fetid dysentery. After several hours of this, the victim experiences a terrible headache which makes him crazy and drives him deliriously out of his house and forces him to run until he drops exhausted.”
“And so he fell there, without help, without friends, naked as the day he was born, and he died.”
“He wasn’t naked. Some passing beggars have stripped him. They will die and be ravaged in their turn. The clothes and underclothes of the dead man will be passed alas from hand to hand, killing all those who touch them. This is how the infection reaches into the farthest recesses of the countryside. My son,” added my father, suddenly changing his tone, “do you see that crow sitting insolently on the top of that chestnut tree? Shoot him, please!”
Quite surprised by this command, but uttering not a word, I took out one of my pistols from its saddle holster, loaded it, took aim and fired. The bird fell, tearing the already yellowing leaves from the drought-stricken branches in its descent. I reloaded my pistol, a little astonished to have wasted a bullet on such a target.
“Would it have eaten the corpse?” I asked.
“No, no. Crows never feed on the flesh of pestiferous bodies. They’re much too clever. Let’s be on our way!” And my father spurred his gelding down the winding road, and when I had caught up to him and was riding side by side, at a walk, he said: “Ambroise Paré, the king’s surgeon, a very good man, and, like ourselves, of the reformed religion, recounted that, the first time he saw a plague victim, he raised the sheet to examine him and the fetid stench exuding from the buboes and gangrene so overpowered him that he lost consciousness and fell into a faint. Well, Monsieur my son,” smiled my father, “you have already surpassed the great Ambroise Paré, if not in knowledge at least in sangfroid. When you shot that crow, your hand wasn’t trembling in the slightest.”
Whereupon he spurred on his steed, leaving me delighted and comforted by his great praise, for, to tell the truth, the sight of this plague victim had struck me with unspeakable horror.
A little before la Lendrevie, as he rode along on his gelding in front of the wagon (with Samson and me bringing up the rear) my father raised his gloved hand to signal a halt. Then, turning in his saddle, he called, “We’ll stay well clear of this awful procession,” indicating three wagonloads of bodies coming from the town as they turned to our right into a large field where ditches dug in the clay gaped open under the leaden sun.
On the driver’s seat of each of these wagons was sitting a man clothed in a cassock of white linen and wearing a monk’s cowl. Each had a long hook fashioned of wood on his knees. When the first wagon made its turn a few toises ahead of us, I could see that the dead were naked and thrown pell-mell on top of each other. Even from this distance and with the wind at our backs, the stench was powerful.
“Is that a new cemetery?” I asked in astonishment.
“No, no. But during a plague it is illegal to bury the dead near churches so as not to infect the holy ground. So they put them in the first available place and in trenches.”
“What are the gravediggers’ hooks for?”
“They aren’t gravediggers. The gravediggers all died in the first days of the epidemic. These hooded fellows are crows—so named because of their hooks with which they snag their dead to avoid getting too close to them.”
“They stick them into their flesh?” I asked, horrified. “That’s a barbarous custom.”
“Yes, indeed, but if it weren’t allowed, no one would do the work. The city recruits them for fabulous pay.”
“How is it that the crows themselves don’t die?”
“They do die. That’s why they’re paid so well.”
At this point, the crow driving the third wagon stopped just as he was making his turn into the field. Through the slits in his cowl, he stared at my father, and then, suddenly dropping his reins, he raised his right arm in greeting. “Good day, My Lord!” he cried with a strong and joyful voice.
“Good day, friend! So you know me?”
“Indeed, and despite your mask. I recognized you from your dapple gelding and your build. I worked for you last spring building the road from Mespech to your mill at les Beunes.”
“And what have you been doing since?”
“Alas, I’ve been mostly out of work, starving for three months and nearly at death’s door.”
“Mespech wouldn’t have refused you bread and soup.”
“But how could I get there to beg them? My poor legs can’t even carry me any more. The plague saved me, God be praised! Now I eat my fill.”
“How much does the town pay you as a crow?”
“My Lord, it’s amazing! Twenty livres a month and I’ve already earned ten. The other ten at the end of July, if I’m still above ground and not under it.” He laughed and crossed himself. “But I’m not complaining,” he continued happily. “It’s a great feast, after all I’ve been through, being rich, filling my paunch every day with meat and Cahors wine, and even sporting with the wanton wenches in la Lendrevie! God forgive me but I was chaste for too long!”
“Do you have wife or children?”
“No! I could never afford ’em.”
“Well, then, friend, I wish you prosperity and a long life!”
“Prosperity I’ve got. But as for a long life, I don’t believe in it,” laughed the crow. “But every day that comes along is a boon as long as my stomach stays full.”
Whereupon, whipping his team vigorously, he drove the wagon on into the field.
“Isn’t it amazing that he’s so happy?” I mused as I watched him go.
My father shook his head. “Poor folk have a kind of brutal and careless courage they get from their condition. Surely they need it more than others do, for it’s not true as some have said that the plague strikes rich and poor alike. At the first sign of the plague your rich bourgeois can afford to apply Galen’s precept, ‘Go quickly, stay far away and come back slowly.’ But the poor are stuck where there’s infection, with no means of escape and no place to go. And because of the filth fate has bestowed on them, undernourished, all thrown on top of each other, the malady wipes them all out.”
Having arrived at the la Lendrevie gate, my father called to the watchman and asked him to alert the commissionaires that we were bringing meat for Monsieur de La Porte and the consuls.
Then, asking the Siorac twins to wait for us, he rode on into the middle of la Lendrevie with Samson and me. To purify the air, great resinous fires burned on the pavement at every crossroads, making the terrible heat of the sun even more unbearable. Not a soul was in the street, save for the invisible ones of the dead. And though there were always droves of them in Sarlat, not a dog, a cat or a pigeon. They’d been slaughtered en masse as potential carriers at the outset of the epidemic. Here and there I noticed more than one boarded window, from which you could hear the moans of the sequestered. Their doorways were draped with a black crêpe ribbon, indicating that it was a mortal offence to go in or out, or even approach.
My father drew rein on a square or rather a little squarelet, at the far end of which stood an old corbelled dwelling. I knew it well and realized then and there that the side of beef destined for La Porte and the consuls was not the only goal of our expedition.
Although armed for war, Jean de Siorac dismounted easily from his horse in his usual way, ordered Samson and me to do the same and to tether our steeds to the iron rings in the paving stones. This we did. We were then about a dozen steps from the infected house. My father, casting a quick glance around us to be sure he wouldn’t be seen, crossed this distance and pulled on a basket hanging by a rope from the attic window. I heard the tinkle of a bell, and a head appeared in the dormer window. It was Franchou, her face drawn but good colour in her cheeks.
“Sweet Jesus!” she cried leaning halfway out the window, revealing two beautiful breasts barely contained in her bodice. “It’s you, My Lord! You haven’t abandoned your servant!”