Heretic Dawn

  “Messieurs, His Highness was unable to wait for you, but was called away by the queen, his mother. Before he left, however, he dictated a letter to the Baron de Quéribus that he asked me to give him.”

  Whereupon Du Guast handed the letter to Quéribus, who opened it straightaway, read it and, his handsome face illuminated by the most exalted joy, said, nearly shaking with happiness:

  “Oh, God! What a good, loyal and beneficent prince! And if I had a thousand lives to give, I’d offer all of them to him! Read this, Siorac! It is about you as well.”

  Reader, I was able to keep this letter, after pressing Quéribus so hard for it that he finally gave it to me, and here it is, sadly written by his secretary, but signed by his hand and composed in his own style:

  Monsieur de Quéribus,

  I do not know how to thank you for the generosity of spirit you devoted to obeying my command, by which I have appreciated your goodwill towards me, which, I assure you, I shall have occasion to repay. Monsieur du Guast will give you a doublet on my behalf, to replace the one in which you were seen in this chateau, which should be returned to Monsieur de Siorac, though he will not return the one you gave him, but keep it as a gauge of your sworn word that you will be brothers and friends for ever, like two bones that are solidly rejoined after being broken.

  Monsieur de Siorac’s father served my grandfather at Ceresole and my father at Calais, and though he’s of the new opinion, he has never raised his sword against his king, being a loyal and faithful Huguenot, like La Noue. I am assured that his son will serve me and the king, my lord and beloved brother, with the same dedication. Having observed that his fortune does not permit him, at present, to maintain his rank in this chateau as he merits, I have directed Du Guast to provide him with 200 écus from my account, so that he and his beautiful brother may clothe themselves as they see fit.

  Quéribus, my gentle friend, I don’t want you to quarrel any more, but, having always loved you and loving you still, your obedience can only redouble the friendship and affection I bear you. Monsieur, love me always, I beg you. Your friendship will create an unbreakable bond between us and I assure you that it will be rewarded.

  Your very good friend,

  Henri

  My Quéribus was practically beside himself with inexpressible happiness at the doublet that His Highness had had brought to him. Du Guast handed it to him, though with what I thought was a jealous smile (due perhaps to the fact that he envied this unprecedented privilege) and the baron put it on and buttoned it, his hands trembling with joy, its splendour inundating his dazzled countenance. I believe he was more honoured with this gift than if he’d received from the king the order of Saint-Michel, or from the papal nuncio a rosary of beads blessed by the Pope.

  This princely vestment was made of pale-blue satin (like the one Quéribus had given me), and though it was decorated with as many precious stones and pearls as was the white garment worn by the Duc d’Anjou during our conversation, I am quite certain that the baron counted as of little consequence the monetary value that he might have realized from the sale of these decorations, compared to the intimate and particular favour displayed by the prince and the tender words that had accompanied it in his letter.

  But for my part, it hadn’t escaped me that, while Du Guast was counting out one by one into my purse the shiny and tintinnabulating écus, Anjou had not so much linked Quéribus to me as he had tied the two of us to himself. He had tried, so to speak, to kill two pigeons with one shot of his arquebus, attempting both to rein in duels in his court and to attach us to him, using a combination of largesse and flattery in a letter that he well knew, as he dictated it, would be cherished in time by both of us well beyond the gifts he’d bestowed on us.

  Well, certainly, I couldn’t forget that that the Duc d’Anjou was the grandson of a Florentine lord, to whom Machiavelli had dedicated his famous work, The Prince. Of course, the duc knew very well that you command the arms and hearts of men as much by honour as by the promise of favours. But in the application of this great precept, this letter displayed such easy finesse. What an example of Italian gentilezza, in which nothing was missing, not even real emotion! How astonishing his passage from the formal vous to the intimate tu when, almost in the same phrase, he orders the obedience of his subject and asks for his friendship! Nevertheless, beneath these caressing words, how could one miss the expression of an authority that brooks no refusal? Anjou had once said: “Others don’t exist when we are not there.” Beneath this velvety paw, the claws were always ready to be bared.

  I also noticed that rather than refer to the Huguenots injuriously as a “cult” as the papists did, or “the so-called reformed religion”, the prince used more courtesy and grace in designating us in his letter those “of the new opinion”—more measured language, which he maintained even when, in the siege of La Rochelle, he asked his brother to intervene, calling him “Monseigneur and beloved brother”, a king who was barely the first and certainly not the second of these terms of respect.

  Quéribus would have wanted to remain with Samson and me and dine with us, and when I reminded him that I was expected at the rue de Trouvevache, he tried to dissuade me from visiting this “arch-coquette”, arguing that if it was pleasure I wanted he knew where to send me to get “complete satisfaction”. But I didn’t consent, both because I didn’t want to break my invitation with Madame des Tourelles, and because I didn’t want Quéribus to occupy all of my time, which he seemed inclined to do in the heat of this new friendship. It wasn’t that I didn’t like him, quite the contrary, but I wanted to establish right away some reserve in our relationship that would allow me to be master of my own time.

  I finally managed to get away, but only after a last embrace and I don’t know how many kisses, pats on the back, promises of eternal friendship, affectionate regards and even a few tears of joy. I watched him as he walked away through the courtyard of the Louvre in the setting sun. And though he was only walking, his step was so lively that you would have said he was running on the tips of his toes up a steep hill, as if to take flight into the skies of happiness.

  “Heu! Quam difficilis gloriae custodia est!”† said a sardonic voice behind me, and turning round I recognized Fogacer, his eyebrows arching and his eyes ablaze, looking like nothing so much as an enormous grasshopper; putting his hand on my shoulder, he looked at me with his slow, sinuous smile, and continued: “Siorac, mi fili, you know it’s to me that you owe all these tender embraces from Quéribus, which are certainly preferable to his sword point in your throat—a secret move that he learnt from the great Silvie—for, seeing you a while ago cavorting in the courtyard of the Louvre with this dangerous swashbuckler, I immediately informed Anjou, which produced the result you’re aware of. And now I’m wondering if it was the right or the wrong thing to do. Assuredly, it’s not easy to protect your life from another threat, mi fili, you whom I nourished from the breasts of philosophy and logic, the two sterile mammaries of Aristotle. I didn’t raise you to the heights of the Capitol, so splendidly attired as you are, your purse overflowing, only to see you thrown into the void from the Tarpeian Rock. Fortuna vitrea est. Tum cum splendet frangitur.”‡

  “Fogacer, what are you telling me?” I asked, opening my eyes, while Samson, Giacomi and Miroul (who had joined me as soon as I’d left the building) stood completely silent and amazed, both at my incredible fortune and at the warning this black grasshopper had just emitted.

  “Siorac,” Fogacer continued, leaning closer to me (a movement that Samson, Giacomi and Miroul immediately imitated, so anxious were they to hear the rest), “within the hour, the entire court will have learnt that you received from the Duc d’Anjou these extraordinary favours. This afternoon, Pierre de L’Étoile will learn of them. Tomorrow the entire city.”

  “So? Is this such a bad thing?” I replied.

  “The worst!” announced Fogacer growing more serious. “From this day on you will be seen as belonging to the party of the D
uc d’Anjou, and hence you will be suspect to the three others. To the Huguenots, of course, who will turn their backs on someone who has earned the friendship of the victor of Jarnac and Moncontour. To the Guisards, who fear the shrewdness of Anjou much more than the king. And, of course, to the king.”

  “To the king? How could that be?” I cried, confused and stammering in my emotion.

  “Didn’t I tell you? The king hates his brother and, from first to last, he abhors all his friends. Siorac, here’s the full extent of the irony of your situation: until today you wouldn’t have been able to present your petition for pardon to the king because of your ripped doublet. But now, given your splendid attire, you could appear before the king, but he would never receive you.”

  “Ah, Fogacer,” I moaned, mired in bitterness, “what are you telling me? If that’s true, I’ve miserably failed at the enterprise that was the reason for this entire journey! For these incredible dangers, all of this wasted time, all this expense. Should I have refused Anjou’s money and the doublet?”

  “What are you thinking? Anjou would have hated you and your Quéribus as well. And his sharp blade would have been the messenger of his disappointment.”

  “So,” I said, crushed with astonishment and despair, my legs trembling beneath me, “without ever having desired it, by the sole work of chance and the invisible linking of events, here I am, a Huguenot in the Duc d’Anjou’s party, detested by the Guisards, suspected by the king, and in trouble with my own people.”

  “Wait, my beloved brother!” cried Samson all of a sudden, his azure eyes all illuminated in the purity of his zeal. “Heaven has spoken to us through the mouth of Fogacer!” (At which, Fogacer arched his diabolic eyebrow sceptically.) “Return to Anjou the corrupt money and the frivolous doublet, which sticks to your skin like the red mantle of the prostitute. What do you care about the king’s pardon? Hasn’t your conscience absolved you for having killed the evil Fontenac? My brother, let us flee from the villainous people of this Babylon! We’ll seek asylum in the sweet fields of Mespech, far from the vices and abominations of this stinking Paris!”

  This eloquent speech, exploding in our midst, left us all a bit awed, all of us except Miroul, who said sotto voce, “This red mantle is in pale-blue satin.”

  However, just as I was about to unleash my anger at my poor brother in the midst of such frustration, Giacomi laid his hand on my arm and said very quietly, “Samson! Weren’t you listening? È une questione di fatto e non di principio.§ Pierre cannot do without the king’s pardon, without which he’s in danger of decapitation, even in Mespech. He cannot be presented to the king except in this doublet, and not in the one Miroul is holding. But if he refuses the largesse of Anjou, his life will also be in danger. Do you want your beloved brother to be in mortal danger from all sides?”

  Of course, hearing this, Samson, tears in his eyes, fell silent, never having had any way of understanding life’s setbacks other than through his biblical and pastoral vision. Certainly my beloved brother had little skill at wisely managing life in the city or at court, where I myself was now caught in a trap like a confused hare that had ventured out of its hole. Oh, how I wished Samson were a hundred leagues from there, or at least in Montfort-l’Amaury, where I’d requested in a letter to Maître Béqueret that he be allowed to stay for at least the time we’d remain here in the capital. And now I was even more eager for this distancing, since it hadn’t escaped me with what favour the Duc d’Anjou had looked at him during our conversation, calling him in his letter my “beautiful brother”. Heavens! All that was missing in my current predicament was for this “special favour” to be explained more precisely, and for my brother, who happily was a little slow, to end up understanding it! Oh, God! What fires, what flames, what biblical brimstone would burst from his mouth! And in what new peril would we be embroiled!

  It’s not that I thought everyone in the duc’s retinue was, shall we say, “Fogacerian”, although this custom, which in France is called “the Italian vice” and in England “the French vice”, was not entirely unknown, Anjou himself seeming to swing between two passions, each with a different object. To tell the truth, I’d initially suspected that the Marquis d’O, little Maugiron and Quéribus were Fogacerians, though I quickly dismissed this thought regarding Quéribus, having observed that, as we frolicked through the courtyard of the Louvre, he’d been “hooked” by every good-looking lady we passed, regarding each and every one with the same interest, which convinced me that his appetites were entirely focused on Eve, rather than on the one who’d been created before her, as a first, primitive sketch.

  But to return to my subject: I looked around me at Fogacer, Giacomi and Miroul, who weren’t looking very hopeful, given our situation, and said quietly, “Well then, my friends, what should I do?”

  “Aspettate domani,”¶ said Giacomi.

  “Patientes vincunt,”|| agreed Fogacer. “The court will forget about this. Favour fades away. So does disgrace.”

  Miroul said in langue d’oc, shaking his head:

  “Samenas sezes en Brial.

  N’auras tot l’estiu.” **

  “So we’re all agreed,” I said.

  “But I didn’t give my opinion,” complained Samson with such a sad and disappointed tone that I took his arm and embraced him, and said as reassuringly as I could, “So speak, Samson.”

  “We should stay here,” he said in a voice strangled by the knot in his throat. “But, my brother, I would like to request that we leave this Babylon the minute the king signs your pardon.”

  “I promise, Samson,” I said immediately.

  I made this promise lightly and kept it just as lightly, alas! For it cost me dearly and caused me a lot of pain, and tragically so, as I shall explain.

  Full of hope, and now relieved of some of my worry, thanks to my friends’ encouragement, I left them at the rue de la Ferronnerie, on their way to share a meal at Guillaume Gautier’s restaurant, and, followed by Miroul, who had absolutely insisted on accompanying me, I headed towards the little house on the rue Trouvevache, where the Baronne des Tourelles had invited me to supper. Upon my knock, and after an eye had examined me from the little peephole, the door opened and the little valet, Nicotin, greeted me with a playful look.

  “Is the baronne at home, Nicotin?”

  “By my conscience I do not know!” replied Nicotin, who found it very natural to speak like his mistress or like the lordlings of the court, never hearing anything but their jargon.

  “And Corinne?”

  “I’ll go and fetch her, Monsieur, if you like,” he said with a deep bow, which seemed slightly mocking to me, but was polite enough to deny me the pretext of giving him a good boot in the backside, though the thought did cross my mind.

  “Ah, Monsieur,” said Miroul, “this is infuriating! These Parisians have a kind of mocking civility that turns my blood to water. And especially this little rogue who hides his impertinence behind his greeting.”

  “Give him two sols on my behalf. That’ll sweeten him up a bit.”

  “Two sols? I’ll give him a slap—that’s what I’ll give him! That’s the only titbit Nicotin will get from me. And a swift kick in the arse.”

  I laughed.

  “Ah, Monsieur,” Miroul continued, “this doesn’t augur well for our evening. Like valet, like mistress. They’re going to have fun with us, I’ll warrant.”

  “Yes, I was warned,” I whispered. “But Miroul, how will we know unless we give it a try?”

  “Ah, Monsieur, more’s the pity! If you don’t succeed you’ll be laid out on the carpet all confused and crestfallen! And what would Barberine say if she saw you mocked like this!”

  “Well, Miroul,” I replied, “now it seems you’re making fun of me!”

  But he didn’t have time to respond. Corinne came in, her apple-like breasts emerging from her emerald bodice, her emerald skirt brocaded with two rows of almond green. The wench looked very healthy, clean and attractive: no make-
up whatsoever, her forehead washed with clear water, her eyes shining, her teeth bright as could be, her lips full, her cheeks rosy and her blonde hair arranged in two long braids.

  “’Sblood, Monsieur!” whispered Miroul, his eyes popping out of his head.

  “Well, my noble Monsieur!” cried Corinne, bowing to the floor with a most indiscreet reverence. After which, coming over to me, she said in her lively and abrupt Parisian accent, “Ah, good gentleman, how splendid you look! I’m so happy to see you arrayed so elegantly! By my conscience, I could die! This satin! And how beautifully made! What shoulders and so à la mode! These pearls and silk from the Orient! You can see straightaway that these are not imitations from Lyons! How happy Madame will be to see you all dressed up like this!”

  “Is she not here?” I asked icily.

  “Madame was forced to delay her return by an unforeseen problem, but she begs you to have supper here without her and promises to join you at midnight.”

  This said, she gave another revealing curtsey, took me by the hand and led me into a small room that was tapestried in purple velvet, and where a large table, lit by a quantity of candles, was laden with a variety of delicious-smelling meats.

  “’Sblood, Corinne!” I cried. “This is all well and good. But it’s sad to have to dine alone, even if it is on a tablecloth embroidered with gold and out of silver dishes. If you will please treat me as your master and obey me, keep me company, along with my Miroul.”

  “Well, Monseigneur!” replied Corinne, looking like nothing so much as the serpent in the Garden of Eden wrapped around the tree of knowledge, and giving me a look that would have sent me straight out of Paradise if our ancestors hadn’t already been booted out. “If I will treat you as my master? Are you asking me, Monseigneur? Command me, I beg you! I’ll be at your command—as docile, pliable, malleable and submissive as all the wives of the Grand Turk rolled into one!”