The Brethren

  I thought she was going to weep, but she no longer seemed to have the strength for tears. Her thin little hand made a little movement in the hollow of mine, and, succumbing to the opium my father had given her, she slipped into a deep slumber.

  One April morning she asked me, “Are those birds I hear?”

  “Yes indeed! And there are hundreds of them!”

  “Oh Pierre, there are leaves on the trees in the close around the moat. The new grass is all tender, and the wheat is already up. And next year I’ll be in the cold dark ground.”

  “Silly goose,” I comforted. “Next year you’ll be right here at Mespech in my arms, just like today.”

  She answered “no” with a look, no longer having the strength to contradict me, and fell asleep, her poor head on my shoulder weighing no more than a dead bird. I fell into a deep meditation, which only made me sadder the more I thought, yet I could not escape it. In the evening of that same day, I was alone with my father in the library and asked, “Father, can you clarify something for me, please? When Christ was before Lazarus’s tomb, it says in the Gospel according to St John, “And Jesus wept.”

  “Is this what’s bothering you?”

  “Yes. I don’t understand His tears. Why does Christ cry about the death of Lazarus when He has come to his tomb to resuscitate him?”

  “Your question, my son, shows how carefully you have read the Scriptures. The answer to your question is that Jesus does not mourn Lazarus as the Jews who are watching him think. His tears are for the ineluctable separation of the living and the dead.”

  This woefully beautiful answer entered me like an arrow that cut the thread between Hélix and me, and, to my confusion and shame, uncontrollable tears burst from my eyes. Seeing this, my father rose and hugged me to his chest and whispered to me with immense tenderness: “You were nursed and raised with little Hélix and naturally you love her dearly. Your tears do not surprise me. Don’t be ashamed of your sorrow, nor afraid of how long it will last. Suffering takes a very long time.”

  I felt I might drown in my father’s delicate kindness, yet at the same time I was so strengthened by it that I dared to ask my father a question that had been troubling me deeply ever since I’d known little Hélix was failing. “Father, will she be saved?”

  “Oh, Pierre! Who can answer your question except the Maker of all things? And yet,” he continued after a thoughtful silence, “if there is an ounce of value in the frailty of my human judgement, I will say that I hope and believe it. She is so young to be called to her Maker.”

  Whenever he knew I was there, Samson would come to visit little Hélix, and sitting modestly by, illuminating the room with his copper-coloured hair, he would remain there smiling at the patient without moving or talking. Miroul also came to visit her with his viol. The instrument had been my mother’s and had been given to our valet at Sauveterre’s insistence, who appreciated the boy’s beautiful voice. As Uncle de Sauveterre expected, Miroul had taught himself to play, having a heaven-sent gift of music. On Sundays, when we celebrated Communion at Mespech, he sang the Psalms of David, holding his viol on his knees and sweetly plucking its strings. That Sauveterre had arranged this astonished me at first. I had grown up believing that music, even religious music, was very voluptuous. But I saw that Calvin himself believed otherwise when later I read from his pen that “it had a wondrous and vigorous power to inflame men’s hearts to praise God with an ever greater zeal.”

  Hélix’s poor little face lit up when she heard Miroul, and every time he appeared she sang in a sweet, low voice: “Miroul’s got bright eyes! Oh yes, but / One is blue, and the other’s chestnut…”

  If her head did not ache too badly, she would ask him for a psalm, always the same, the one beginning “Bless our paths, O Lord…”. Miroul sang it in a most arresting voice, his viol on his knees. This psalm must have pleased Hélix because it was a song of hope and because she believed she was at the end of her voyage and gave herself over to the Lord to guide her—but she also loved it because it sang of paths and routes and because she had for so long been confined to her bed by her extreme frailty.

  “Pierre, my love,” she said one day, her voice so tenuous now that I could hardly hear her, “I have only to hear this psalm sung to remember the time I rode behind you on your horse on the way to the le Breuil farm three years ago.”

  When she was first settled in the little room on the ground floor, Barberine came to see her often, but all she could do was cry bitterly for hours at a time, which troubled little Hélix so much that my father urged her mother to make her visits shorter and less frequent. The rest of our household was urged to greet her from the door without coming into the room, especially la Maligou, who didn’t cry so much, but rather tired the patient out with her endless gossip.

  My little sister Catherine, her blonde braids hanging sadly about her face and a doll on her arm, came in one day to see Hélix when she was in one of her periods of remission. She asked for the doll, and hugged it and cradled it in her arms despite her age, as if it were her own little baby smiling happily all the time. Seeing this, Catherine said to her, “Hélix, I want to give her to you. She’s yours!”

  Whereupon, she ran off, and went to her room to cry her heart out over the loss of her favourite doll whom she loved tenderly. I went to find her as soon as I could, suspecting how aggrieved she was. She now occupied my mother’s majestic room, the largest and most beautiful in Mespech, with purple and gold curtains framing its arched windows, and a richly ornamented four-poster bed. It was in this bed, so enormous for her little body, that I found her sobbing and succeeded in consoling her.

  From that day on, the doll never left little Hélix’s arms, who seemed ever smaller, being so thin and frail. Remembering how, one night when she was still healthy and happy, she’d awakened me to confide in me her terror of hell because of her “great sin”, I worried that she might once again be feeling this fear along with the apprehension of her death. But both during her remissions and her crises, with her doll hugged tightly to her, she seemed quite serene and almost gay.

  During the day, one or another of our servants would pop their heads in at the door and greet her: “Good morning, Hélix, how are you?” She could make no response when she was in one of her crises, but otherwise, she would smile sweetly and answer in a sing-song voice as she hugged her doll: “Better, better, much better!”

  It has since often occurred to me that the doll was what I had once been for her when I was much younger and the object of such an immense tenderness from this childlike Eve—a love which later became a sin of the body, but never of the soul.

  Little Sissy also came to see Hélix in her room, but she was quickly banished and I well remember why. Though she was a mere eleven years old, like my sister Catherine, she was after other kinds of games than dolls, her flesh well developed already, full of flirtatious postures and looks, blinking her dark liquid slits of eyes at me provocatively. Despite her excessive weakness, Hélix was well aware of these tricks, and she whispered in my ear, “Pierre, get rid of that little crow. She’s hovering too close around you.”

  Of course, I did her bidding, but the Gypsy’s daughter, as clever as ten serpents, suddenly resisted, wrinkling her nose and spitting fire and brimstone. When I in turn got angry, she seized me with both arms around the waist and wrapped herself around me to prevent being pushed out the door. When at last I succeeded in shoving her out and had closed the door behind her, I saw little Hélix in tears, her desperate eyes fixed on me.

  Those were her last tears. The next morning, 25th April, she was once again calm and very serene. At noon, when Faujanet peeked in as usual to say hello, she said to him: “Good Faujanet, you shall soon be making my coffin.”

  Hearing this, Faujanet blushed, and stood there open-mouthed, his smile frozen on his lips, very stupid and sad, not knowing what to say or how to leave.

  That day, I know not how, despite her extreme feebleness, she looked very beautif
ul again with a radiance that was not of this world. During the evening she asked me to wash her, sprinkle perfume on her, put some rouge on her cheeks and change her shift. I asked her if I should call Barberine and Franchou.

  “No,” she said, “you. Just you!”

  When I’d finished, she signalled to me to sit down on her bed, and, leaning her light head on my shoulder, hugging her doll in her right hand, she slipped her left hand into my open doublet (for it was already quite hot for the season) and grasped the medallion of Mary I wore around my neck, her poor haggard eyes begging my permission. I remained still for quite some time, but my forced immobility ended up by making me uncomfortable, and I got up quietly, believing she’d fallen asleep. Her head slipped towards me, and then her body. Feeling I was still somehow attached to her, I saw she was still holding on to the chain of the medallion with her left hand. I had some difficulty disengaging her fingers to free myself, and turning to look back I saw that her eyes were open and rolled back. I knelt trembling at her bedside and listened to her heart—something I’d often done in jest when hearing her tell me she’d had a great love-thought, and I would always answer that I would straightaway check, and woe betide her if she were lying—but on this day it was life that was lying, for her poor heart was no longer beating against her ribs.

  No more than an hour had passed since little Hélix’s death when my father sent me and Samson to help with marking the spring lambs. In fact, they could have very well done without us and on my return to Mespech the next morning, I understood that it had been a pretext to get me out of the way while my father, locked away in his ground-floor room, sawed off the cranium of the dead girl to verify his diagnosis. When I returned, little Hélix was folded into a shroud and lay in her chestnut coffin, Catherine’s doll in her arms, and around her head a bandage whose purpose I understood instantly.

  Faujanet had waited for me to take one last look at little Hélix before nailing on the cover which would separate her for ever from the world of the living. I made a short prayer and, walking quickly away so as not to hear the hammer blows, I went up to Catherine’s room where, as I suspected, she lay on her bed in tears both for the death of her friend and the loss of her doll. Taking her in my arms, I felt a sweet warmth from her plump little body which brought me enormous relief after what I had just seen and, mingling tears and kisses, I promised her that upon my return from Montpellier I’d bring her the biggest, most beautiful doll that a girl in Sarlat had ever had.

  Before going to find my father to report on the marking of the spring lambs, I took time to dry my tears, not wanting to make a spectacle of my weakness. I found him in his library, pacing back and forth, his face quite drawn. He said with a coldness that I could see was feigned: “It was indeed an abscess, as I’d thought, grown so large that it was pressing on the meninges and the nerves and drowning them in pus.” I was terribly distressed, and not wishing to dwell on the gruesome image his words painted in my mind, I said, “Are you going to inform Monsieur de Lascaux?”

  “No. He’s not a bad man, really, but too puffed up in his vanity like a turkey, and I’d only make an enemy of him.”

  He lowered his eyes. “Escorgol has finished digging her grave next to Marsal on the north of the close. We’ll bury her at noon according to our rites. I will make a short sermon. Do you wish to be present?”

  I quickly understood that my father was not asking whether I wished to be excused from appearing but instead was requesting that I contain my feelings in the presence of our servants.

  “I’ll be there,” I said as stiffly as I could. And, though it was implicit, I kept my promise and remained dry-eyed while they lowered her featherweight coffin into “the cold and dark of the ground”, as little Hélix had said.

  Our entire household was present, looking sad and mournful. My father gave the eulogy. I thought I understood, as I listened, why he had wanted to take over Sauveterre’s usual duty of sermonizing: for he slipped in a quotation from Calvin, chosen, I thought, to echo the conversation we’d had a few days before about little Hélix: “Those whom God calls to his salvation,” went the quote, “He receives with His bounteous mercy without regard for their station.”

  I noticed that my father went out of his way during the weeks that followed to keep me busy and in constant motion, often sending me outside Mespech, to le Breuil, to the les Beunes mill or to Sarlat. But though I accomplished these missions conscientiously, I found little interest in them, having lost all enthusiasm for life. I applied myself mournfully to everything I did, even with Samson, towards whom, only God knows why, I felt less loving, and I fell into a taciturn state that left him greatly troubled, but which I seemed unable to break, every word summoning up a terrible effort.

  As I rode Accla around on various errands for my father, the tender new spring leaves reaching out to me neither caught my eye nor caused the usual delicious intake of breath and happy swelling of my chest, so sorrowful was I and as though drawn earthward. Not even Accla could give me pleasure, and as I rode her I could feel her astonishment that I loved her so little. However busy I might appear, I could do nothing but remember the past, chewing it over like a sad dog his leash, in thoughts that never ceased, even in bed, where I tossed and turned, burnt and shrivelled on the embers of my sorrow.

  My melancholy had lasted a month already, when Samson and I were called into the library. I noticed immediately from my first glance at my father and Sauveterre that their heads were held much higher than at any time since the meeting with the Protestant lords at Mespech. My father, in particular, seemed himself again, rejuvenated, his chin raised, hands on his hips and voice sonorous:

  “My rascals,” he said, with his old playfulness, “the affairs of the Reformation have taken a turn for the better since the Bayonne meeting at which, as you know, Jezebel very nearly sold our blood to the Spanish. Now everything has changed. You should know that about four years ago a few hundred of our Bretons established a colony in the Americas on the coast of Florida. Just here,” he said, putting his finger on a point of his globe, which Samson and I obediently leant over to study, astonished that it was so far from Sarlat. “These Bretons,” he continued, “are good sailors, good soldiers and have done some buccaneering in the Antilles. Well, Felipe II got uneasy that the French were ‘nesting’ so near his conquests and sent a large force to Florida, which surprised our Bretons by treachery and massacred every last one of them after promising them safe conduct if they surrendered.”

  “There’s no limit,” Sauveterre added, his voice shaking, “to the blood this very Catholic king has been willing to shed for his empire. If the truth is ever known about all the massacres he has perpetrated in the Americas, there’s not a Christian would not hold him in abomination.”

  “But news of this particular massacre reached the French court, my rascals,” said my father, “and the Florentine is gnashing her teeth and is loudly and furiously demanding justice and reparations from her son-in-law. She won’t get them, and she’s too contemptible, of course, to go to war over this, but for the time being, at least, her so-called holy alliance with Felipe is over. And so we are safe—for the moment at least, I must stress this—and already there seems to be a lessening of assassinations of isolated Huguenots throughout the kingdom, as if the most fanatical papists were losing heart after seeing the Spanish king ill-esteemed in France.”

  After a moment of silence, my father looked at each of us in turn and said with a kind of authoritative pomp: “My sons, your Uncle de Sauveterre and I have decided that the time is ripe to send you to Montpellier to begin your studies. You shall set out two days hence. Miroul, your valet, will accompany you.”

  I was neither happy nor sorry with this decision. I simply accepted it with the indifference I felt about everything. However, I gathered together, at my father’s behest, all my worldly goods, clothing and books, which did not amount to any great volume. Three of us would be travelling, but would take four horses, the fourth a pac
khorse for our belongings, as well as three blunderbusses and ammunition. In our saddlebags we would each carry two pistols, as well as a sword and dagger which should never leave our sides even when we slept. At my father’s insistence, we were to wear full armour and helmet while travelling and remove them only when bivouacked: a terrible burden in the summer’s heat, but though well armed, our troop was awfully small for such a long voyage.

  I would ride Accla and Samson Albière, his white pony. And for Miroul and the packhorse he would lead, far from giving us old nags, my father provided two rapid and tough little Arabians, arguing that, if attacked by a large band of brigands, our only chance would be to flee and that we couldn’t risk losing our precious valet or our possessions.

  Our journey was to take us from Sarlat to Cahors, and then Montauban. But from there my father counselled us not to take the road to Castres, which would have been shorter, but consisted of winding roads through very wild country. He preferred the longer plains route through Toulouse, Carcassone and Béziers, where the road would be more travelled.

  On the eve of our departure my father and Sauveterre, remembering their days as captains of the Norman legion, inspected our equipment to the last detail: arms, harnesses, bridles, horseshoes, straps, awls and thread to repair our bridles, everything was examined.

  Finally, as the day of our trip dawned, my father, greatly moved, and Sauveterre, equally so but showing it less, received us in the library when we were fully armed and helmeted.

  Sauveterre spoke first, calling on us to remember to pray to God not with our lips but in our hearts; to read the Scriptures and to be mindful of them; to sing the Psalms (Miroul was bringing his viol) morning and night; and to remember the Word of God as a constant counsel in all matters of our lives, large and small.